Coats For Christmas in Eastern KY
From this time last year throughout the rest of the year, Kentucky’s east and west ends have had a historically tough time. In December of 2021, Western Kentucky experienced a night of extreme weather that resulted in a monstrous tornado that left a destructive path through a large swath of the state. Only a few months later, at the end of July, floods thundered through the hills of Eastern Kentucky wiping away homes, coursing through school buildings, and devastating many in one fell swoop. The state came together to care for the western part of the state in their time of need and so, they are again for the eastern part - and in their own way, so are the students at LaRue County High School.
Danielle Brown, a teacher at LaRue County High School, first heard about the initiative to donate new coats and hoodies to 30 schools in Eastern KY from Superintendent David Raleigh’s Weekly Wrap-Up email, “When I read Mr. Raleigh’s email about the schools in Eastern KY being in need of coats for their students going into the winter, I knew we could help. I’ve lived in LaRue County my entire life and now teaching here at LCHS, I knew we could come together because I've seen it so many times.”
The initiative Brown and her students put together was on behalf of an organization supporting public education administrators throughout the state - the Kentucky Association of School Administrators. Raleigh, as a long-time member of the organization, had included invitations to participate in the donation for Eastern KY since the initiative began a couple of months ago, “KASA is an organization that helps develop leadership in administrators across the state. What I love about how they operate is that it is representative of how the Commonwealth, and LaRue County, choose to live - by realizing we’re all in this together. When I heard that Danielle’s class was leading the charge to collect funds to support Eastern KY, I was proud, but not surprised - this is simply who we are!”
The students at LCHS decided the best way to accomplish their goal was to have a “penny war” between the various classes. Each day students brought in loose change and $1 bills and by the end of the week ended up raising over $1,000. This amazing accomplishment is something Brown didn’t think would happen at quite this scale, “I knew the students were passionate about this - they were motivated by getting coats to their fellow students in Eastern KY who had suffered the loss of most if not all of their personal goods from the flood. But this was absolutely astounding. This is why we call ourselves a Hawk Family, this is the power of how a family comes together.”
