Evergreen Public Schools
o Student enrollment: 26,443.
o District poverty rate: 47.1 percent.
o Students living in poverty: 12,454.
Vancouver Public Schools
o Student enrollment: 23,339.
o District poverty rate: 51.6 percent.
o Students living in poverty: 12,042.
How to help
Evergreen School District Foundation
o Contact: 360-604-4022
o On the Web: www.evergreenschooldistrictfoundation.org
Foundation for
Vancouver Public Schools
o Contact: 360-313-4730
o On the Web: foundationforvps.org
Digging through a plastic bag bulging with school supplies, Zaryn Hunt loaded her arms with colorful markers, walked down the school bus aisle and dropped them into a box of markers on a bus seat. Next, she gathered notebooks.
The 12-year-old student from Cascade Middle School was one of several volunteers collecting and organizing donated school supplies in a school bus parked at the Fisher’s Landing Burgerville for Thursday’s Stuff the Bus event organized by the Evergreen School District Foundation.
Meanwhile, across town at the Salmon Creek Burgerville, the Foundation for Vancouver Public Schools carried out its Stuff the Bus event. For the first time, the foundations of Clark County’s two largest school districts worked together for a monthlong, citywide school supply drive that culminated in Thursday’s activities.
“The numbers tell us how wealth has moved out of this region,” said Rob Perkins, an Evergreen school board member who stood next to the bus. “It’s not easy for many families in our district to afford school supplies.”