Pflugerville Teacher's Plea For Backpacks Ends With 800 Donations

PFLUGERVILLE, TX — A Pflugerville elementary school teacher who sought to secure just a few backpacks for some of her students ended up with a deluge of donations — more than 800 of the items — from area companies.

Bilingual education teacher Margaret Olivarez of Copperfield Elementary had hoped to collect needed backpacks for her students, penning letters to Dell, Nordstrom, T-Mobile and other companies to solicit donations as children prepared to return to school after summer break.

What happened next was not only unexpected, but shone a light on the generosity of the human spirit. So far, 822 backpacks have been donated, Pflugerville ISD officials said. "I didn’t think we would get this kind of attention," Olivarez said. "I was a little overwhelmed."

It all started with "just a simple email," sent to various CEOs during her summer break, the teacher explained. It didn’t take long for the responses to start rolling in, she added. But she also described having cut out the middleman in her quest: "I started at the very top," Olivarez noted with a smile, according to district officials.

Nordstrom co-president Erik Nordstrom, took the time to respond directly before contributing $200 toward the cause, officials said. An email to Ross executive Matt Young was met with a response from a local district manager a few days later, school officials added.

In its press release, HP noted the teacher's email to company CEO Dion Weisler "went through a whirlwind" before reaching HP Austin offices. Working close to the upcoming school start date, HP employees set out to support an entire Copperfield grade level, and did so in overwhelming fashion — taking only a week to gather donations of 104 new backpacks and stuffing school supplies in each one.

Dell was a donating champ, supplying the largest amount of donations with 230 backpacks. Employees at the tech giant took to the charge with gusto, district officials noted, setting aside time on Tuesday to stuff the backpacks with supplies and letters of encouragement, before delivering them in their own vehicles to the school.

Cell phone competitors Sprint and T-Mobile sent in backpacks with company logos emblazoned upon them (but, hey, they're backpacks). Most recently, Geico joined in the cause as well, officials said. Some donors gave in the classic sense of the human tactic, as seen by recent donations by people choosing to remain anonymous via Our Savior Lutheran Church, from where a reliable stream of donations has emerged in the past.

This isn't the first time Olivarez has taken matters into her own hands to benefit her students. She was inspired to take on the backpack drive this year after finding success in collecting T-shirts for her students last year for a special school event. Seeing that none of the students in her classroom had college-oriented shirts for the school’s weekly College Shirt Day, she emailed various colleges for a few shirts inquiring about donations.

The floodgates of goodwill were opened then too, with more than 400 shirts from the U.S. Air Force Academy alone, with donations continuing to come in. Every Copperfield student received a college shirt last school year, Olivarez reported, and the teacher now expects to provide the entire student body with a shirt and backpack by the first day of school.

Campus administrators and teachers on Thursday were scheduled to students' homes during the annual Copperfield Community Walk, starting at 5:30 p.m. This year, they'll be able to distribute backpacks to the students during the event thanks to the teacher's efforts and the largesse of area companies.

Copperfield serves a school zone in northeast Austin, in the southernmost portion of PfISD. According to the school’s 2018-19 improvement plan, 71 percent of the campus student body was classified as economically disadvantaged. Copperfield is expected to include an enrollment of some 530 students this school year.