Ramsey PTO Organizes Card Drive for Sandy Hook Elementary School

Ramsey students and parents are being asked to provide comfort to the community shocked by an elementary school shooting that killed 26 victims in Connecticut Friday.

“I’ve already gotten great responses from people [in our community],” Angie Kelly, the PTO President at Dater School, who organized the card and letter drive over the weekend, said Monday evening.

Kelly is asking kids and parents in the community to write cards and letters expressing their sympathy and support to the families affected by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. They can be dropped off at the Dater School main office this week, and will be sent to the school’s PTO, Kelly said.

The cards should be written at home, and will not be worked on in school, she said.

“At home, if students want to express themselves, they can, with their parents there working with them,” Kelly said. “I am happy to get those expressions to Sandy Hook.”

She is also collecting monetary donations for the Sandy Hook Elementary PTA.

“Being so involved with the various PTO organizations over the last few years, I tried to put myself in the shoes of their PTO leader,” Kelly said in a letter to district parents. “I thought, ‘what would be the first thing I would do?’ I know, after grieving and wanting to comfort the victims' families, my first priority would be to help re-build the lives of the survivors and try to help move the school community forward to help them heal.”

Kelly plans to collect the cards and letters from Dater this Thursday, and again on Jan. 11, after the holiday break. Kelly suggested that any students wanting to write cards and letters during or after break might want to make them Valentine’s Day themed, “sending love from Ramsey.”

In the letter she emailed to parents, she urged them to participate. “Let's show Sandy Hook that Ramsey Cares.”

Cards, she said, could be written to the families of the victims, the PTA, or the community as a whole. A letter Kelly sent to parents explaining both the card drive and the fundraiser is attached.

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