HOLLAND (WHTC-AM/FM) — For the third consecutive year, Ottawa County Deputy Sheriffs Association just donated nearly100 backpacks filled with school supplies to Pine Creek Elementary School.
OCDSA President Joe Walker expressed joy in a Facebook post, in which he shared the photo of the backpacks in the school’s office, givng a “special thank you to OCDSA Secretary-Treasurer Bob Wittum and his wife, Kathy, for founding and spearheading this annual effort year after year after year,” adding that the Wittum family is “awesome.”
Wittum tells WHTC Ottawa County Deputy Sheriff’s Association members include county workers from the Corrections, Records, and Animal Control areas, as well as deputies.
“Every year we do a charity basketball game with the Detroit Lions and use the money raised from that. I do the ordering and my wife helps assemble them,” Wittum wrote.
For Krista Visser, Pine Creek’s principal for the last two years, the donation is significant, because many of Pine Creek’s students are from low-income families. She said children in better circumstances can be excited about starting a new school year, but for financially disadvantaged kids, the night before school can be filled with anxiety — especailly for those without the basic school supplies.
She announced the donation during Pine Creek’s open house, while thanking the OCDSA for the gift, and invited students in need to pick up their backpacks. The backpacks had notebooks, markers, rulers, glue sticks — “your basic school supplies,” she said, adding, “and the backbacks all were different. No one would know they got a donated backpack.”
She said the kids were also able to meet some of the deputies, all of whom were in uniform for the event.
This year’s motto at Pine Creek is “defy limits,” she said, because the students have lives with many limitations, but “they’re all really bright kids.”
Despite the challenges, Pine Creek recieved an A from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s most-recent Michigan Context and Performance Report Card: Public Elementary and Middle Schools, issued earlier this year.
