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Ohio's public schools serve 1.6 million children - 90 percent of students in the state! What happens in the classroom has impacts far beyond the walls of the K-12 school building or higher ed lecture hall. So, on behalf of the 115,000 members of the Ohio Education Association, we're taking a deeper dive into some of the many education issues facing our students, educators, and communities. Originally launched in 2021 as Education Matters, Public Education Matters is your source for insightful conversations with the people who shape the education landscape in Ohio. Have a topic you'd like to hear about on Public Education Matters? Email us at educationmatters@ohea.org
Kelly DiCato 0:00
I was just crying. I couldn't believe someone in the community, by just a math teacher reaching out saying she wants to help her students, they would be willing to donate products.
Various student voices 0:19
Public education matters. Public education matters. Public education matters.
Jeff Wensing 0:25
This is Public Education Matters, brought to you by the Ohio Education Association.
Katie Olmsted 0:37
Thanks for joining us for Public Education Matters. I'm Katie Olmsted, and I'm part of the communications team for the Ohio Education Association and the public school educators OEA represents in communities across the state. In every community, big and small, city, rural, and suburban alike, there are students who don't have everything they need to be successful in school. Across Ohio, we have students whose families struggle to provide needed school supplies. We have students who lack access to basic hygiene supplies. We have students who just don't have everyday essentials, and we know those kinds of things can have a tremendous negative impact on a student's educational journey. The Chardon Care Closet at Chardon High School aims to change that, so students can focus on learning without worrying about basic necessities. Three Chardon High School educators started it to create a safe, welcoming, and discreet space where students could get what they need without embarrassment or barriers, and the demand has been incredible. During the last school year alone, the Chardon Care Closet put 4,109 school supplies items directly into students' hands: pens, pencils, folders, notebooks, and more. The care closet also distributed more than 10,000 hygiene products, things like toothpaste, deodorant, feminine hygiene products, hair brushes, and lip balm-so much lip balm! It is the single most frequently requested and distributed item in the care closet, believe it or not. But none of it would be possible without the support of the Chardon community, or the tireless work of the Chardon Education Association member who joined us for this episode. We sat down with her in late July as she was starting to get her classroom and the care closet ready for students once again. Take a listen to our conversation.
Kelly DiCato 2:37
Hi, I'm Kelly DiCato. I teach at Chardon High School in Chardon, Ohio. I teach Algebra One at the high school.
Katie Olmsted 2:45
And you are one of a few people with Chardon Education Association that started the Chardon Care Closet. What can you tell me about what that is and how it got its start?
Kelly DiCato 2:57
Yeah, I started it with two other women. One is in CEA. Well, she was. Her name's Megan Wessels. She actually has moved on from teaching. And then the other one was a social worker that works at our school, Joan Blackburn. And the three of us started it last school year, so 25-26. But it started a little before then. Megan was a math teacher, like me. We were in the same department, relatively the same age, and we kept seeing kids that didn't have calculators, didn't have pencils. We were continually at the back to school sales, which have started, which make me nauseous. Have started to supply the kids with, you know, pencils, rulers, calculators, and we kept reflecting, like, why, why is this happening? You know, we would reach out communication to parents, and of course, they would do their best to supply it. But you know, there's some kids that would fall through the cracks. And two school years ago, 24-25 Megan and I had a a student that was the same. I had this student in Algebra One. She had this student the following year in Geometry, and we found out this student was unfortunately kicked out of his household, and they were sleeping. And the police brought him into school, and we said, "What's going on? And we heard the whole story. Megan ended up driving to our local Walmart, bought shampoo, conditioner, school supplies, things for the student, and we were like, "You know what? This is something I think we should look into", and we sat on it. This was in the spring. We sat on it that school year, and then that summer, it I just was like, "We're doing it. Let let's just go for it", and got approval from administration. I think I sent 50 to 60 emails to local community members. And churches, and just jaw-dropping, amazing contributions from the Chardon community, and it's getting bigger and bigger ever since.
Katie Olmsted 5:11
So, how does this work inside the school?
Kelly DiCato 5:14
Yeah, so that was hard to start. Chardon was built in the late 30s, 1930s, 1940s has had some renovations. We don't just have rooms. Teachers are, you know, traveling, so we don't even have like an open classroom or anything. So we spent that summer before the 25-26 school year, trying to figure out where to put it, and I was walking up and down the halls with Joan and Megan, with administration. We were trying to find places, and my classroom is on the second floor, and right next to my classroom is a copy room with a staff bathroom that is probably no bigger than anyone's, you know, master closet. It's it's not very big, but I was like, why don't we use this space? It's super accessible to me. It's right across from our family computer science room, and I was like, they have access. She's a wonderful woman. She can like, you know, pull kids in if they need things, and so we just started there. We found old shelves in a storage room, and then I actually reached out to Facebook and said, "Can anybody help? And one of my friends' brother works for Home Depot, and he said we'd be willing to donate some shelves and some storage containers, and it just kept growing from there.
Katie Olmsted 6:47
And my understanding is the first donation of items was actually dental hygiene kits.
Kelly DiCato 6:52
Yeah, it was. I started emailing in June of 25 to all Chardon kind of local companies. I got on our city of Chardon kind of page and was scoping out all the local businesses. And Chardon Smile, they are a wonderful company in Chardon. They donate to everything. They're really good supporters. They donated 50 hygiene kits. It came with like in a bag, it came with toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, and floss, and I can vividly remember they were our first donation. They called and they emailed and said, "We wanna, we want you to come pick it up". And it was in June, summer break. I have my two boys with me, and I remember walking out of there, and I was just, I was just crying. I couldn't believe someone in the community, by just a math teacher reaching out saying she wants to help her students, they would be willing to donate products. And St. Mary's, a local church, just put a bin out, and I went with my boys shortly after, and it was heaping. I had to use like 10 reusable grocery bags to fill everything that they had donated. It was just it was a very overwhelming process, completely unexpected. At the beginning, the pictures I was taking as like proof, and I tried to make a PowerPoint and keep up with it. It all the images are in my kitchen and living room, you know, it was like one of those grounds starting from the bottom up kind of thing. And I remember Megan, Joan, and I walking into my classroom at the beginning of August to get ready for school, and we were like crying. My whole classroom, I couldn't even perform teaching if I wanted to, the whole classroom was full of products that the community had donated, and it absolutely amazing.
Katie Olmsted 8:49
Last year alone, you brought in $17,000 in donations, both the monetary donations and those products.
Kelly DiCato 8:57
Yeah, we did.
Katie Olmsted 8:59
What did you do with it? I mean, what what has been the needs that you have seen?
Kelly DiCato 9:03
Yeah, I mean, so we did have a local company again. Nothing was. It is all from Chardon. Nothing has branched out from Chardon. That's just how amazing of a community that I live in. I live and work in Chardon. Reals Auto. I could probably. It's only probably two miles from my house. I could probably walk through the woods and get there. They had a Christmas fundraiser that they did. They support local other another local school and other organizations, and they did the holiday fundraiser and they gave us $4,000 That was our biggest donation of the year, and then I've had a family member, and I actually wrote an Ohio Education grant, and so did one of my coworkers. She wrote a grant as well, so we we received about five monetary donations. The rest was just products, and thanks to Home Depot, they gave us 20 totes. You know those big ones, those like 27 gallon totes. And again, Chardon doesn't have much storage. We would love a new school, but we don't have one. So I would fill those totes and I would store them in like a little area in my classroom. I would store them on the shelves in the care closets, we have product shelves, but then the Home Depot ones are metal, and I would store the totes on that. But we bought shampoo, conditioner, body soap, loofas, mouthwash was big, floss, feminine hygiene products, deodorant is very big. The travel size goes pretty well because it fits into the girls' purses and you know the boys' book bags. Chapstick-I never knew how much kiddos love chapstick. And then school supplies-I mean, non-stop: pencils, pens, folders, binders, notebooks, calculators are super hard to come by because they're the most expensive product. But I kept an inventory list. I have a nerdy math spreadsheet that would document how many products I put out. It keeps a running total for me. I inventoried everything just to document it. You know, not for myself, but also for my board of education, and just I don't know, I made it a part of my like. I know you don't want to hear this for union ears, but part of my planning period, I would do my school work, and then I would go over my lunch and planning period for back to back, and I would go next door and see what I needed to do, and I would fill it during my planning period.
Katie Olmsted 11:41
Well, I was gonna say, just with the outreach that you do, all of these emails, all of the connecting with the local businesses, that is a full time job on top of the full time job you already do. How do you handle that?
Kelly DiCato 11:54
Yeah, and I'm a mommy, so I do a lot of the outreach. Again, you probably don't want to hear it because of the evening, but I do a lot of the outreach on the weekends, in the evenings, my summers. A lot of like the please help us is happening on the summers. I've gotten onto local Facebook pages and tried to do some outreach on like a Chardon community page, trying to get you know the the word out. My boys and I just walked our square and passed out flyers to some local community shops. I just honestly, I don't have time to do it during the day. Algebra One, as we all know, is like an extremely important state tested school area. I'm. I've been lucky to have amazing students and get amazing results in the classroom for Algebra One. But I don't really have time during the day, unless it's during lunch and planning. Or my kiddos, they go to Chardon and their school. They go to the elementary school right down the street, so I have to. I'm done at 2:45 they're done at 3:30 So sometimes for those 40-five minutes, I'll spend in the care closet. I did have a couple of girls during their lunch period that would sit in my room, and they would help me if I needed it. So like if I had like students of mine, yeah. So like I had a donation, and I'd say, "Hey, girls, run this over, stock it, make it look nice", and they would do it for me. So that that was super nice, and they they didn't like to go to the cafeteria, so it was like a win win for all of us.
Katie Olmsted 13:30
Knowing what hard work this is, why is it so important to you?
Kelly DiCato 13:36
Um, I got into teaching not because this is a similar story, I'm sure for teachers. I was not, you know, the straight A kid. I was like the kid that got the B. I went to school for social. I was an athlete, and my parents were both teachers, so I got to see such like a wonderful life growing up, you know, if if I needed anything, my parents got it for me. If I wanted a bat for softball, they were the first person to go to you know the store and get it for me. So I, I didn't come from a world where I needed a banana for lunch and I didn't have it. I came from a really great family, and when I moved, I taught at Parma with Jeff Wensing actually before I moved to Chardon, and I saw things at Parma that broke my heart. And then when I moved to Chardon and I started working at Chardon, I was kind of shocked that it was still at Chardon, not near what I was seeing from the the Cleveland City moving into Parma. But you know, there there are still people in need in Chardon. We're kind of a diverse little town, and when I was seeing some of my kiddos, you know, not have a water bottle, like I told you, that one student that was final the straw for me, where Megan literally went to Walmart to help this student in need. I got into teaching because I like helping others, and I like helping students, and I like to have fun with the kids, and I like to bring my personality and not make math so stale. You know, want them to actually come to Algebra One all the time, and I just thought this might be another way to like reach the kiddos and make them want to come to school, and you know, I don't know, reach them in other ways that I wasn't able to reach them in the classroom.
Katie Olmsted 15:42
And that really touches on one of the reasons why this is so important. We know when kids don't have access to hygiene products, when when they don't have deodorant or clean clothes, or they haven't showered.
Kelly DiCato 15:54
Yeah.
Katie Olmsted 15:54
They're not coming to school if they can avoid it.
Kelly DiCato 15:57
Yeah, I mean we've all. Yeah, I mean, we there's no one out there that hasn't been in a situation where you have stress sweat and you you can smell yourself and you're like you're you know you're anxious about it. It's all you can think about, you know. And and appearances matter to teenagers. You know, it's so important to them. I know they may not look like it, but they they want to smell good and they want to feel good. and they don't want chapped lips, and they don't want chapped lips. No, no, they love chapstick, but no, I think it's just I don't know. It's something the three of us just we would constantly see kiddos in there, and we would hear things like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe they have this. Oh, I needed this so badly. Or you know, I've had teachers come to me and say, "Hey, look, this kid needs things. What can we do? So I brought in you know brown paper bags from wherever I was shopping, and I was like, "Let's just stock it. Let's just fill it, and let's just give it to them. You know, we even created a Google form that was not easy to distribute, but like an anonymous way. They had to give their email because I had to know what kiddo I was giving the supplies to. But we tried to do a Google form where they could try to select what they needed, and I would give it to them. They could talk to the nurse. Like I said, Joan Blackburn is our social worker, so she's an amazing outreach. She has so many connections in the community. They could talk to their counselor. They could talk to an administrator. There was just so many ways. Once the word started to get out, we have a mentoring program at Chardon, so the mentors were bringing their mentees and they were like looking through it. It just-I don't know. It felt good to help the community and the kiddos in ways that I wasn't already helping them.
Katie Olmsted 16:25
And they don't want chapped lips.
Kelly DiCato 16:26
And they don't want chapped lips. No, no, they love chapstick, but no, I think it's just I don't know. It's something the three of us just we would constantly see kiddos in there, and we would hear things like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe they have this. Oh, I needed this so badly. Or you know, I've had teachers come to me and say, "Hey, look, this kid needs things. What can we do?" So I brought in you know brown paper bags from wherever I was shopping, and I was like, "Let's just stock it. Let's just fill it, and let's just give it to them". You know, we even created a Google form that was not easy to distribute, but like an anonymous way. They had to give their email because I had to know what kiddo I was giving the supplies to. But we tried to do a Google form where they could try to select what they needed, and I would give it to them. They could talk to the nurse. Like I said, Joan Blackburn is our social worker, so she's an amazing outreach. She has so many connections in the community. They could talk to their counselor. They could talk to an administrator. There was just so many ways. Once the word started to get out, we have a mentoring program at Chardon, so the mentors were bringing their mentees and they were like looking through it. It just-I don't know. It felt good to help the community and the kiddos in ways that I wasn't already helping them.
Katie Olmsted 17:48
What does it say about the community that they have gotten behind this project like they have?
Kelly DiCato 17:54
They're amazing. I mean, I've heard how amazing my community is. I moved into Chardon in 2014, so we've had some events in our history where I have heard the community has just fully supported us, and I've seen it at the football games, of course. But you know, like just saying, "Hey, I'm wanting to start this". I don't even know what it looks like, and I almost laugh at myself when I see the early pictures and the early signage that I made because honestly, AI this year has helped me immensely. I didn't even have AI. I felt like two years ago. Now this past school year, I'm like, help me make some signage, help me do this, help me put an email together. But like once I put it out to the community, it it just nobody said no. Nobody. I mean, all the churches said yes. All the local communities have said yes. I mean, the one of our yoga local yoga places, Taproot, they are going to do something at the square. They do like a free community yoga in the mornings, and they're willing to like sponsor the care closet one morning. You know, it's just the church on the square. They want to put their money towards the care closet for the month of August. My mom's church wants to do the same thing. It's just like I don't know. It felt like I asked, and they said yes, and it wasn't painful. It took time, but it wasn't painful, and it was it was just never a no. Everybody was a yes, even my administration.
Katie Olmsted 19:35
I know you said it's it's only been Chardon so far helping support it, but if people outside of Chardon want to help. Is there a way for them to help you?
Kelly DiCato 19:43
Yeah, of course. And I actually, like I said, I just recently started posting to social media, and a lot of people-not a lot, you know, 20 people have said, "I wish my school had this". I can. I'm in a neighboring district. Can my kids? Come and get supplies, and I've always responded with yes, and I've always responded with give my name, give my email address to your school district, and I would love to help. I'm not like a master at this, you know. I have a degree in mathematics, but like if there's a way for me to help others to start it in other locations. That would be great. How they get to us? I have a Facebook page. Chardon Care Closet is on Facebook. All of my information that for the care closets on Facebook. We also have an Amazon wish list. It's tinyurl.com/chardoncarecloset. They can send donations to the Chardon Board of Education Attention Care Closet. Or honestly, some people back to school shopping right now, and you know, pencils are a quarter. And they said, "Can we just go to our local store and drop things off at Chardon High School?" And I said, "Absolutely". But I mean, they can email me kelly.dicato@chardonschools.org. There's a ton of ways to get a hold of me, and anything that gets donated goes straight into the hands of the Chardon, Chardon students.
Katie Olmsted 21:14
And that is thanks to you, and it is thanks to your coworkers who have been working so hard on this, and it's thanks to the Chardon community, and it's it's thanks to the students helping and the students who are willing to accept the help.
Kelly DiCato 21:26
Absolutely.
Katie Olmsted 21:27
Everyone coming together for this.
Kelly DiCato 21:29
Yeah, I absolutely love that it's anonymous. There's no questions asked. It's you know it's in a copy room, so there are teachers there from time to time, but like nobody asks questions. You go in, you get what you need. If it's a pencil, if it's 26 things that you're putting in a book bag, it is what it is. If you need something, it's there for the kid, and if anybody needs anything, they can reach out. And I can always leave things at the main office, and they can come pick it up.
Katie Olmsted 21:58
Well, thank you, thank you for everything you're doing for your kiddos, for the kiddos in the surrounding schools and communities, now.
Kelly DiCato 22:06
Yeah.
Katie Olmsted 22:06
Thank you for sitting down with me today.
Kelly DiCato 22:08
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Katie Olmsted 22:13
If you would like to support the Chardon Care Closet, you can find the links and info Kelly mentioned during our conversation in the show notes for this episode. And while you're there, make sure you subscribe to Public Education Matters wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss an episode in the future. New episodes drop every Thursday this season as we continue our conversations with the people who are shaping the education landscape and our students' lives every day. Because in Ohio, public education matters.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai