Hundreds of Beaufort County students were left without tech for online school. How to help
When S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster closed schools in March, the Beaufort County School District was one of fewer than 10 districts in the state that went fully online for remote learning. By graduations in June, students will have spent more than two months video conferencing with their classrooms and turning in digital assignments.
The reason was the district’s “one to one” tech policy that meant all 3rd through 12th-graders could take a device home with them amid the coronavirus pandemic.
But for “the little guys” — students in 2nd grade and younger — that policy didn’t apply.
“I don’t think a lot of people are considering that these little guys still need to get their education,” Bluffton Realtor Catherine Donaldson said.
That consideration is the reason Donaldson has spent the past month running Kindles for Kids, a grassroots GoFundMe effort that’s raised more than $20,000 to buy devices for Beaufort County’s youngest students.
So far, Donaldson has distributed more than 300 devices to elementary schoolers across the county — but she estimates she’ll need $15,000 more on top of the $20,000 already raised to get every elementary school child online.
“We’re really hopeful we meet the need,” Donaldson said. “I’m not concerned about when the school year ends, because they’ll need those devices in the summer.”
From Facebook to GoFundMe
Donaldson has helped “lots” of families and local organizations raise money in the 15 years she’s lived here.
When school buildings closed, she said, she knew she needed to help out.
“Once we realized these little Kindle Fires, which are $50 on Amazon, work for these kids, we just put out a call on social media asking for people to donate them,” Donaldson said.
The Kindle Fire is an e-reader tablet produced by Amazon. It doesn’t have a word-processing program, but it can connect to the internet, display documents and send emails — pretty much everything a student needs to connect to their online classes, she said.
District officials said last week that schools are keeping records of students they lost contact with during school closures and attempting to reach them with social workers, guidance counselors and bilingual liaisons.
The district has not provided the total number of district students that are offline, though Beaufort Elementary School reported to the school board last week that about a third of students are still not “fully engaged” with online learning.
Donaldson’s first goal was to supply Kindles to students in need at Red Cedar Elementary, a Bluffton school with a high percentage of low-income families. The principal there, Kathleen Corley, told her about 100 kids needed the devices.
Though the operation has grown, Donaldson’s process has remained the same: principals contact her about the number of devices they’ll need.
Once the Kindles are ordered, she sends them to school officials for distribution.
So far, Kindles for Kids has sent 347 devices to students at five district elementary schools: Whale Branch, Beaufort, Red Cedar, M.C. Riley and Port Royal.
Donaldson said that by the end of the week nearly 200 additional devices will have been sent to Okatie Elementary and Hilton Head IB Elementary; then, she said, the operation will tackle new requests from Mossy Oaks and Lady’s Island Elementary.
Originally, she asked people to call her cell to donate. But she received enough support that she moved to GoFundMe after the first 100 or so devices were sent to Red Cedar. As of Tuesday afternoon, 136 people have donated on that platform.
She said she’s received spikes in donations after getting a shoutout from Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka and Beaufort Mayor Billy Keyserling’s email newsletters. But she’s hoping for support from Amazon, and sustained giving instead of the “flash in the pan” donations she’s used to on GoFundMe.
“There are people out there — if they knew about this, they’d donate,” Donaldson said. “We live in a really affluent area, even though we’re talking about challenges here.”
This story was originally published April 29, 2020 at 4:50 AM.