SAN MARCOS, Texas — Teachers can routinely spend upwards of hundreds of dollars each year to decorate their classrooms and provide supplies for their students. They are expenses that school districts can’t always help out with.
“The school districts are strapped, you know, they’re cutting back,” Shelly O’Donnell, the executive director of The Teacher Reuse, said. “Their budgets are low, and they’re limited on what they can do for the teachers.”
O’Donnell, a former teacher herself, started The Teacher Reuse to be the connecting link between resources teachers are given and what they hope to provide for their students.
“I know that, as a teacher, I wanted to decorate my classroom. But I also wanted to have those extra supplies, resources available,” O’Donnell said.
Everything in The Teacher Reuse's warehouse in San Marcos is free for teachers to take for the upcoming school year.
“We don't want our teachers to have to pay for anything,” O’Donnell said.
This came in handy for Teresa Ezponda, a bilingual pre-K teacher in Hays CISD who came to Texas from Spain for a visiting teaching program.
“Basically, I had nothing here because, in Spain, I have my resources, my materials. But I came here just with my clothes,” Ezponda said.
When she first took a look at her empty classroom last year, which only contained tables and chairs, Ezponda said wasn’t sure how she would create a welcoming classroom – one that her pre-K students would want to come to every day.
“I was trying to find things on Amazon, Temu, everything I could get. Things that are not really pricey,” Ezponda said.
Ezponda ended up spending around $400 out of pocket for all the supplies, not to mention the cost of moving to the U.S. from Spain due to the need for bilingual teachers in Texas.
But once another teacher told her about The Teacher Reuse, it changed everything.
“This kind of saved me and my classroom because I had nothing really,” Ezponda said.
Now Ezponda is telling all the other teachers coming from her program about The Teacher Reuse, so they don’t have to go through what she endured.
The Teacher Reuse has five storage units, but it's slowly moving out of them and into a main building and two additional spaces next door this year. But O’Donnell said she's looking for a larger space.
The Teacher Reuse also got a grant for a van to deliver supplies to teachers, but the funding does not cover the full expense of the van, so the organization is continuing to look for additional funding.
If you are interested in donating, you can do so on The Teacher Reuse's website. The organization is also always looking for more volunteers because donations come in daily.