PCCU started the Hoosier Explorers Field Trip Fund several years ago to help local public schools take students on more field trips in Indiana. PCCU staff and members have given generously to this fund and helped many local kids explore their home state.
When schools began to shutter in mid-March, it wiped out many of these trips that had already been greenlight, and kept numerous others from going past the planning stage. So PCCU began looking for other ways to help local students in these tough times.
PCCU’s Education & Outreach Director Kim Welch spoke to Mrs. Amy Vance, a teacher at Fairview Elementary School in Richmond, about the needs of her students. Mrs. Vance explained that Richmond Community Schools supply students in fifth grade and above with Chromebooks for research and other schoolwork. In the wake of the covid-19 emergency many students in fourth grade and below were sharing time on an older sibling’s school-supplied Chromebook or one of their family’s personal devices to keep learning. Mrs. Vance said that simple tablet computers would help younger students, particularly those without older siblings enrolled or lacking personal devices at home, to get more involved in remote learning.
Thanks to the generosity of staff and members, PCCU was happy to donate twenty-two Amazon Fire tablets to the school. Mrs. Plank was happy to receive them on Friday, May 1st, and she planned to spend the rest of the day at the school getting them set up for students to use. Thanks to her hard work she was able to begin handing them out on Monday, May 4th.
PCCU would like to thank Mrs. Vance, Mrs. Plank, and their colleagues at Fairview School, and across Richmond Community Schools for their dedication to our community’s children and serving them so well through such trying circumstances.