Rotary brings holiday gifts to J. Colin students

For many, Christmas this year may be scant in material items due to lack of money for presents.
The North Fort Myers Rotary Club teamed up with teachers at J. Colin English Elementary to help Santa out a bit in advance of the holiday.
They used a portable classroom as Santa’s workshop on Tuesday, with the teachers serving as elves as they prepared to provide gifts to families in need.
On Friday, Santa came to the school via Zoom as his elves for the day handed out presents to the parents of the children in the Head Start program.
Head Start is designed to assist children whose families live below the poverty level.
David Rice, president of the Rotary, said the organization contributed a $5,000 grant to help the gift-giving effort.
“This is the fifth year we’ve done this. We reached out to the school and they were honored to do this with us,” Rice said.
“We appreciate the community supporting our fund-raising events,” said Rotarian Jack Hess.
Bags were filled with gifts that the families will wrap and give to their children. Toys included Play-Doh, trucks, Etch-a-Sketches, dolls and more.
The Rotary used to handle the wrapping, but it became too time consuming with too many kids were in need, especially now with the pandemic keeping many more parents home and out of work.
Teachers got the items at Wal-Mart after asking the students what they wanted this year.
Students will get three toys, clothes and a new pair of shoes.
On Friday, the classes were brought in individually to see Santa as the presents were handed out
Maria Hartzell, a teacher at J. Colin English, said this is a great help for the parents, especially at this year. Many more families qualified for Head Start because the economy has been so bad.
“A lot of these parents have been laid off and Christmas is going to be very slim for them if they can even get their bills paid,” Hartzell said. “It helps the teachers because kids whose shoes are too small don’t learn as well than if they had shoes that fit.”
Hartzell added there are still many students learning online because the parents are afraid to bring their children back, though most are taking part in face-to-face learning. Those learning from home will still get gifts.
“We want to thank the Rotary Club for doing this. It’s a great help and so much appreciated,” Hartzell said.