Tag Archives: Lee Elementary

He didn’t arrive in a sleigh nor was he wearing a red suit and leather boots, but EPISD Superintendent Juan E. Cabrera was playing the part of Santa on Wednesday.

Cabrera came to deliver a special gift to the students at Lee: his $750 holiday stipend from the successful Penny Swap election.

The gift will be used to buy more of the special computer coding robots students at the school have been using as part of the successful efforts to use EPISD’s Active Learning Framework in the classroom.

“I wanted to give back and thought the holiday bonus was a great way to do it,” Cabrera said. “It’s also my way to thank our employees and the community for supporting the Penny Swap.”

The $750 is a special grant presented to Lee Elementary in collaboration with the EPISD Education Foundation. All full-time EPISD employees will be receiving a $750 stipend as promised with the successful passage of the Tax Ratification Election, or Penny Swap, on Nov. 6.

“This extra $750 will be in our employees check this Friday,” Cabrera said. “I’m happy that we can make a small difference in lives of our dedicated employees this holiday season.”

Lee was selected because of its teachers’ support of EPISD Education Foundation’s Employee Giving Campaign.  The campus will be using the extra funds to expand their coding program using Dash Robots.

“It is a great honor to be able to receive Mr. Cabrera’s $750 stipend,” principal Terry Montes said. “The teachers can utilize these robots to integrate the mastery of TEKS and provide an engaging atmosphere for students to learn.  We appreciate the opportunity to enhance our students’ successes through this donation.”

A group of third graders, some with Dash Robots in hand, thanked the superintendent for his donation. They were all smiles as they talked to him about how the technology works and how much they enjoyed using it.

“Everybody has the chance to try the robots,” said third grader Daniel Meniola. “I think they’re going to like learning to coding them. I’m excited about getting more Dash.”

His classmate Esmeralda Grijalva is equally excited about the prospect of more Dash Robots at the school.

“I think it’s really cool we get more robots. They are really cool,” she said. “I like it when you program them and you have to test them to see if it works correctly.”

Lee Elementary showcased its Active Learning Framework model to leadership in EPISD and the community earlier this month.

The Dash Robots are among one of the many active learning strategies at the campus.

“I’m excited about active learning we are doing across the District and especially here at Lee Elementary,” Cabrera said. “We are really engaging kids in a different way. I’m excited to see what they’re doing with the extra money.”

Verizon Call Center employees loaded up hundreds of glue sticks, thousands of paper, notebooks, back packs, hundreds of boxes of crayons and stacked all 5,000 plus items on the stage of the Lee Elementary School cafeteria on Oct. 19. Verizon presented the donation to Lee Elementary as part of its annual Tools 4 Schools supply giveaway this year.

“We take great pride in giving back to the local community and each year our team especially enjoys participating in the Verizon Foundation’s Tools 4 Schools campaign,” said Steven Araiza, director of Customer Service for Verizon Wireless.

The event is part of a national Verizon school supply drive to collect new school supplies including rulers, crayons, notebooks and other items students need to start the school year.

“It’s a great community outreach program and a great incentive for our students. This initiative is going to help our students because they will have the right tools to be ready for school,” principal Terry Montes said.

The school welcomed the guests from Verizon with applause and cheers from the pep squad before presenting Araiza with a plaque of appreciation.

“I think it was really nice of them to bring all these supplies to our school,” student Kitzia Castañera said. “It will help students who come to school without supplies.”

Fourth grader Genesis Montes was excited about the supplies, particularly the tall stack of notebooks.

“We are thankful because all these supplies will help us learn,” Genesis said. “My favorite subject is social studies because we learn about presidents and cities, and these notebooks will be really useful to write our lessons in.”

The supplies will be distributed to throughout the school year students by the counselor on a need basis.

“The counselor is the first person families go to when they are in need of assistance,” principal Montes said. “We have a closet where the school supplies are housed so when there is a need we will be to help distribute those supplies.”

Author: EPISD