FULLERTON : District Gives Desks to School in Mexico

Old school desks discarded by the Fullerton School District are now in use at a new school in Tijuana, where students have had to bring their own cardboard boxes as makeshift desks.

The Fullerton Rotary Club rounded up more than 200 desks after receiving a request for aid from a Tijuana chapter of the international service organization, said Ray Ashcroft, director of community service for the 71-year-old local chapter.

Five members of the Tijuana chapter drove up from Mexico Oct. 30 to pick up the wooden desks, which were stacked in a Fullerton School District warehouse, Ashcroft said. The desks were considered too old and beaten-up to continue using them in Fullerton, but Ashcroft said the Mexican club members made clear that they were desperate for any desks they could get.

Government funding for the newly built school had run out before any desks were bought, and the Mexican rotary club members recounted that children there have had to use cardboard boxes instead, Ashcroft said.

The Tijuana men loaded up their truck and returned to Mexico in the same day. Now the desks are being repaired and refinished, Ashcroft said. Some will be dismantled for parts to repair others, he said.

“They were just ecstatic,” Ashcroft said. “A couple of them had kids in the (Tijuana) school.”

Fullerton School Supt. Duncan Johnson, also a member of the Rotary Club, said the district’s Board of Trustees voted to give the desks to the Mexican school, even though surplus property is normally auctioned off.

“When we go to auction, (the desks) typically do not get picked up, and are junked,” Johnson said.

Some of the desks were 25 years old, with scarred wooden lids, Johnson said. But a few of the models built at that same time are still in use in the Fullerton district, he said.

Johnson said he was pleased to give the desks to the Mexican school. “Something which would have ended up on a junk pile is now in use,” he said.

Ashcroft said the club has a yearly project to help Mexico. Last year, members refurbished an ambulance and sent it to Cuernavaca.

The ambulance had been retired at 100,000 miles, according to general practice, Ashcroft said. But some auto mechanics in the club were able to overhaul the vehicle, and it now transports a doctor to emergency calls in seven industrial areas of Cuernavaca, Ashcroft said.