Santa Ana Group Seeking School Uniform Donations

As soon as the Santa Ana school board voted in December to require students in kindergarten through eighth grade to wear uniforms, community activists and school officials knew they would have to help poor families meet the cost of clothing their children.

“We’re very supportive of uniforms for children, certainly in the lower grades,” said Amin David, president of Los Amigos of Orange County, a group that focuses on Latino issues. “But while to you and I, $25 may seem like a reasonable amount, there are families that just can’t come up with that money.”

For the past few months, the Parent Uniform Fund-Raising Committee has been scouring the city for donors, wheedling and cajoling people to supply the cost of at least one uniform.

A survey done in March by the school district found that 4,000 students would need their uniforms subsidized, although more students have returned to school possessing uniforms than was anticipated. School officials say donations have been trickling in slower than they hoped but that they will continue fund-raising efforts into the winter.

“There shouldn’t be any Latino business people who do not respond to this,” David said. “Just think of a little kid, a precious little child wearing a uniform that you’ve donated.”

The district, along with the city recreation department and the Community Services Agency, had planned to raise about $20,000 at a benefit “prom” dinner-dance scheduled for Saturday, but it was postponed for lack of interest.

“What we’re hearing is that it’s the summer and people are not really in the mood for a formal party,” she said. “Maybe we’ll wait until November or December when it’s the season for parties.”

The benefit prom was to include an auction, but Patricia Gomez, the district official organizing the drive, said the only sure donation received was a round-trip ticket for two to the Bay Area from Southwest Airlines.

Each school is responsible for maintaining its own uniform fund, and the district has not tallied how much money has been donated or how many uniforms have been bought for poor students, Gomez said.

If the schools run out of money, then principals can call on the district for help.

So far, schools have used a variety of strategies to pay for uniforms. One elementary school is selling T-shirts; at others, parents are selling doughnuts. At Wallace Davis Elementary School, volunteer Stelle Bonilla buys popcorn and ice cream in bulk, then sells them and uses the profits to buy uniforms.

“We’ve been very fortunate in Stelle because we’ve had some heart-rending cases,” Vice Principal Maria Garcia-Gutierrez said. “For example, we had one family who arrived new to our district--they didn’t have any resources at all because they’d completely exhausted them just coming over from Mexico.”

The schools are not collecting thousands of dollars, she said, “but they’re assisting one or two students a week, and that’s how they’re subsidizing the [students].”

For now, efforts will remain centered on urging business and individuals to contribute to the uniform drive.

Helping the schools extend their fund-raising to the professional community is Ruben Smith, an Irvine attorney with the Hispanic Education Endowment Fund. The fund’s goal is to raise $1 million for scholarships for Latino children.

In encouraging others to give, Smith points out that the donation of a uniform to Santa Ana’s schoolchildren has multiple benefits.

“It’s the message it conveys to the kids and the families, that there are people out there who want to contribute and who care about their future,” Smith said. “It tells them that when they go to school, they’re not just doing it for themselves; there’s a greater community that wants to see them succeed.”