South Loop Residents Give Laptops To Charter School Students In Need
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The city of Chicago announced last month that they would be providing 100,000 computer devices for CPS students who needed them.
But one South Loop woman saw two charter students falling behind with the tablet devices they'd been given. She stepped in to help in a big way.
CBS 2's Marissa Parra has more on the community effort to level the playing field.
Kavlin Harris has big dreams of working in business.
"School is very important because I feel like I'm gonna need it in the long run," Harris said.
Harris and Amarya King are among the state's two million students doing e-learning. But the tools they had, small tablets, made learning even harder.
"If I clicked on Google Docs, it would take 10 seconds. And it loads slow," King said.
"It wasn't working properly," Harris added.
That's why they turned to their mentor Rekeia Williams, to ask if they could use her computer.
"They have essays to do. They have projects to work on," Williams said. But her heart broke knowing it was unsafe for them to have to keep leaving their homes
Unsustainable and unfair.
"Every kid can't afford a laptop.What may work for another group of kids in another neighborhood may not work for all of the kids in the city," Williams said.
So she turned to a South Loop Facebook site.
"My neighbors. My amazing neighbors," Williams said. "I asked for one or two laptops and I got over 30 responses. Someone just came and dropped off a laptop two minutes ago."
Williams was able to not only get her two mentees laptops, she was able to surprise four other students.
Harris was so excited about his, he couldn't wait and started doing his school assignments during our interview.
"I got a lot of work to do so it's keeping me busy," he said. "It's a good thing that people care about other people. Especially during this time."
Perspectives Charter School said a survey done last month showed 50% of their students didn't have a computer device of any kind. There is an push to get more devices into the hands of students.
If you have an old computer, cellphone or tablet lying around that you'd like to donate to charter students, you can email ea@pcsedu.org
