Pasco Reaches Out To Help Tornado-Devastated Alabama School

Pasco County School Board members voted Tuesday to help a small school district that was hit in a big way by tornadoes earlier this year.

Pasco will send a variety of surplus supplies to Franklin County, Alabama, to help Phil Campbell High School get ready for students when the first bell rings this fall. The school was completely destroyed by the storms that swept through Alabama April 25-27, said Principal Cindy Davis.

In fact, Davis said, students at the seventh-through-12th-grade high school will be returning to a campus that’s very different from the one that greeted them at the start of last school year.

“We will be in 28 temporary modular buildings that are rolling into town as we speak,” Davis said Tuesday. “We’ll have to stock those buildings with things that teachers can use temporarily.”

This, she said, is why Pasco County’s donation is so welcomed.

Pasco School Board member Steve Luikart asked district officials earlier this summer to look into the prospect of sending some surplus supplies to Alabama. Surplus supplies are those that have been deemed unusable by the district, generally because they are outdated. The supplies that will go to Alabama include some desktop computers, a few projectors, some televisions and lots of books.

“They need anything they (can get),” Luikart said. “It’s a chance to help another county.”

Surplus supplies are typically sent to Tampa to be auctioned off for pennies on the dollar, he added.

The plight of the Alabama school district was brought to Luikart’s attention by a teacher in Pasco County whose parents live near the Franklin County Schools’ superintendent. When she told Luikart how much they needed, he said he figured he could at least look into the prospect of helping.

“It doesn’t hurt to ask,” he said.

Details of how the supplies will be sent to Alabama are still being worked out.

In the meantime, Davis said she is appreciative of any donations. She is especially pleased with the televisions.

Davis said it’s a priority for her to have daily eye contact with her students and to engage them in conversation as they move in between classes. Since this school year will involve portables, she’s been trying to come up with another way to reach out to her students on a regular basis. Daily news broadcasts are one idea that she’s had, she said, adding that she wants “a visual reminder that we’re all there.”

The storm that hit Franklin County April 27 is considered the “seventh deadliest day of tornadoes in our nation’s history,” Davis said. “The city lost 28 of our citizens and over 40 percent of the homes were destroyed.”

Pasco residents who wish to help further will find there is a tornado relief fund established to benefit Phil Campbell High School. Checks can be mailed to P.O. Box 610 Russellville, Ala., 35653. The school also has disaster relief information available on its website at pchsbobcats.com.