Volunteers Help Tulsa Teachers Get Ready For First Day Of School

With the start of school just days away, educators are scrambling to get area facilities ready to welcome students back.

Dozens of volunteers showed up to one Tulsa school to help teachers get things ready for the big day.

It's taken about three weeks to get the library at Monroe Demonstration academy ready in time for the start of school Thursday.

Painting, cleaning and moving.

"It's so important for teachers to have community support because they can't do it all on their own,” volunteer Akela Leach said.

Akela is a volunteer with the Village project and a teacher at another school. She says even though she's in the middle of working on her own classroom, she wants to help as many other educators as she can.

It's a community effort Principal Kiana Smith is so grateful to see as Monroe Demonstration Academy gets ready for a big year.

"Last year, we shared the building with dual-immersion so they had Pre-k through third grade on one hallway and they had 6th through eighth on another hallway,” Principal Kiana Smith said.
“So now we just have, they have their own school building and we are now able to expand."

The expansion means setting up new classrooms and refreshing old spaces.

"As you can see we've been painting, I think more paint got on me than the wall but that's ok because our wonderful volunteers helped there,” Smith said.

The school will now house 300 students, close to 60 more than last year.

It is a big project Akela says she's glad she could help with, even with her own classroom still waiting to be finished.

“I will be as ready as I can be,” she said.