Back-to-school usually means a long supply list sent out to each family, but not for West Sedona School students. Thanks to the Manzanita Outreach nonprofit, students will not need to purchase that long list this school year.
“We’re able to purchase those items with bulk discounts and nonprofit discounts, not paying tax, all these things and aggregate them in our warehouse,” Manzanita Outreach Executive Director Ben Burke said. “Then we create packs for each grade level so that the parents don’t have to go to stores and spend whatever they spend on these things.”
Last school year, Burke and his team piloted the program to provide eight schools around the Verde Valley with industrial-sized tool cabinets filled with school supplies for teachers, including West Sedona School and Sedona Charter School. These large cabinets, only accessed by staff, held hundreds of supplies, which the organization would refill every few months.
But this new pilot program, providing individual student’s supplies, is exclusive to the West Sedona School.
“We have found that West Sedona School is particularly welcoming to us to speak with their teachers. We also looked at the need data, at student families’ property rates, at free and reduced meal rates at all schools and at school size,” Burke said. “All these different factors lined up that it really worked out. We are not biting off more than we can chew, and we know that it’s an amount of money that we can spend that won’t break our bank.”
The only supply requirements for students will be backpacks, lunch boxes and the WSS planner.
“West Sedona School is so thankful that Manzanita Outreach will be graciously providing school supplies for all of our students this year as a piloting program,” WSS Principal Elizabeth Tavasci said. “These are the supplies that are typically provided by families at the beginning of the school year. All of the supplies like pencils, crayons, notebooks, etc. are being donated by Manzanita Outreach. This has been a blessing for our families and teachers.”
In addition to WSS’s pilot program, 14 schools will a receive a supply cabinet for this school year, including:
n American Heritage Academy, Camp Verde campus
n American Heritage Academy, Cottonwood campus
n Beaver Creek School
n Camp Verde Elementary School
n Camp Verde Middle School
n Clarkdale-Jerome School
n Cottonwood Community School
n Desert Star Community School, Cornville
n Dr. Daniel Bright Elementary School, Cottonwood
n Immaculate Conception Catholic School, Cottonwood
n Mountain View Preparatory School, Cottonwood
n Oak Creek School, Cornville
n Sedona Charter School
On top of the school supply donations, the Manzanita Outreach also provides snack packs for the schools, which are also restocked every so often throughout the year.
“The snack boxes are about a 12 by 12 square box that we had designed to fit into a file cabinet, and they’re filled with about 100 individually wrapped snack items,” Burke said. “And we pack up these boxes with a variety of different snacks. We also deliver them to the schools so they work in tandem with the school supply program.”
But unlike the school supplies, the snack packs are delivered to all the public schools in the Verde Valley.
Throughout next week, the supplies and snacks will be delivered to the schools before the start of the school year.
