Hundreds of Brownsville Independent School District employees stepped up in a big way to fill the Christmas wish lists of more than 350 homeless and unaccompanied students, resulting in dozens of bicycles and hundreds of other wrapped Christmas gifts hidden all over the BISD administration building on Price Road.
Monday afternoon BISD employees organized the gifts in a staging area in the BISD board room, took them to an empty parking lot, where they were loaded into 30 BISD school buses and delivered to homeless children across the district. Superintendent Rene Gutierrez, the district’s board of trustees, administrators, teachers and others rode on the busses delivering the gifts.
“Our staff is truly a giving staff here at BISD because all of the children were adopted,” Nellie Cantu, deputy superinntendent for Business and Operations said Monday afternoon as the staging operation got underway.
Cantu said the BISD cabinet of top administrators several weeks ago endorsed the idea of gift-giving to the homeless youth and the response had been overwhelming. Employees teamed up through an “Adopt an Angel” initiative in which students who otherwise might not have had much of a Christmas got what they asked for.
The students filled out wish lists and BISD employees bought, and in some cases teamed up to buy the gifts.
“These are students who some of them live in motels or are looked after by a foster parent but who are unaccompanied and aren’t with their parents,” Cantu said.
She said that in years past employees exchanged gifts with each other in “Secret Santa” programs but decided this year to share gifts with students in BISD’s Homeless Youth Project, which has existed for years.
