With the first day of school approaching on Sept. 1, hundreds of Long Island students and their parents got a head start on back-to-school preparations on Monday at the Cradle of Aviation Museum, in Garden City, while four local school districts received funding to support classroom activities in the year ahead.
Optimum distributed 500 backpacks at the sixth annual Back-to-School Backpack Program, after awarding $10,000 DonorsChoose grants to the Uniondale, Hempstead, Westbury and Roosevelt school districts. The giveaway, supported by News 12 and Warner Bros. Discovery, highlighted the companies’ commitment to education, digital literacy and community engagement while providing teachers with funding for classroom supplies, technology and hands-on learning projects.
DonorsChoose is a nonprofit, founded by Bronx high school teacher Charles Best, that helps individuals fund public-school classrooms and veterans projects. Dozens of Uniondale teachers use the Donorschoose website to request white boards, book cubbies and coding programs for elementary school students.
For Hempstead parent Ni-ima Lattimer, who attended the event with her son, Kaymauri McCray, and picked up backpacks for him and her two other children, the event helped ease the financial burden of preparing for a new school year.
“It’s important to me as a parent, because we have to worry about the high prices of school uniforms now,” Lattimer said. “This community event for back to school is helping parents with stress.”
The event, she said, offered more than free backpacks, connecting families with local organizations. She praised organizers for holding events like this one.
“They’re not just handing them book bags,” Lattimer said. “This is a social event. You can network with the outreach and stuff like that.”
The giveaway is part of Optimum’s annual effort to support students in underserved communities throughout its service area.
“We have 500 backpacks here today to distribute to students across Long Island, which is really acting on our commitment to supporting students in the communities that we serve,” Allison Aylward, Optimum’s director of community affairs, said.
In addition to the backpacks, each participating district received a $10,000 DonorsChoose grant that teachers can use to fund everything from classroom supplies and technology to STEM materials and other educational resources.
“In addition to the backpack events for the students, we’re also committed to the academic success of the kids,” Aylward said. “It’s one of our company’s commitments to serve the underserved youth – and youth in general.”
Christine Lopes, the Uniondale district’s grants coordinator, said that the grant would help expand the schools’ robotics and coding programs. Uniondale already uses the VEX robotics program in its after-school clubs, and plans to explore adding the FIRST Lego League, which teaches coding and engineering concepts through hands-on Lego-based challenges.
Hempstead Superintendent Gary Rush said his district also plans to invest in robotics as it expands its career and technical education offerings. “We have a CTE program coming to the middle school,” Rush said. “We’re actually looking to do some things with robotics and other areas at the school.”
Introducing robotics in middle school gives students an opportunity to explore technical fields before entering high school, he added. “The exposure early makes a huge difference,” Rush said.
Monday’s event was one of several backpack giveaways Optimum is hosting this month. News 12 marketing manager, Robin Demasi, said the network plans to distribute 4,000 backpacks throughout its service area, including New Jersey, Connecticut and Brooklyn.
After kids picked up their school supplies, they lined up at other booths like Stop & Shop’s, where they spun a wheel for a prize, and the Hicksville nonprofit Book Fairies, which redistributes books to under-sourced communities in Long Island and New York City, and was giving out children’s books.
