DUBLIN

Dublin resident's School Rocks Party Box nonprofit brings supplies, smiles to Columbus students

Tia Gannon, School Rocks Party Box founder and director, sits with donated school supplies to be delivered to school children in need as part of her nonprofit's mission. She is shown Sept. 13 at her Dublin home, where she and other group members and volunteers package the school supply packets.

Dublin resident Tia Gannon doesn’t count the hours she pours into the sorting, packing and delivery of crayons, Lego blocks and toiletries to children at four schools.

But she does count every word those children write in the thank-you letters and drawings that she keeps at her Dublin residence that serves as the operative office of School Rocks Party Box, the nonprofit organization she founded in 2016.

“I get paid in my heart every day,” said Gannon, repeating her stock reply to anyone who asks if she is compensated for the work that she, her husband, Mark, their two sons, Max and Jack, and the organization's board of directors invest in serving an increasing number of children who benefit from School Rocks Party Box.

At the start of this school year, about 1,500 school-supply kits were delivered to St. Mary Magdalene Catholic School, a private parochial elementary school in the Hilltop neighborhood in west Columbus, and three Columbus City Schools building: Beatty Park Elementary School in the Mount Vernon neighborhood in east Columbus; Forest Park Elementary School in the Forest Park neighborhood, just south of Westerville; and North Linden Elementary School in northeast Columbus.

Gannon said she hopes to add a fifth building this school year.

Each school-supply kit contained crayons, markers, pencils, erasers, a pencil sharpener, glue stick and scissors.

But since its start five years ago St. Mary Magdalene Catholic School, the reach of School Rocks Party Box has expanded in scope and size.

“She is our fairy godmother,” Megan Isenbarger, a third-grade teacher at St. Mary Magdalene, said of Gannon.

“You can hear the squeals and shouts of ‘(Mrs.) Tia’ when the kids see her,” said Isenbarger, a Dublin resident who was the first teacher that Gannon reached out to five years ago.

Isenbarger said she was at first reluctant to accept the offer because she thought it meant her students receiving a gift others couldn’t enjoy, but Gannon was prepared to make it a special day for all the students, Isenbarger said.

“We all went home as a staff that day and all felt the Christmas spirit,” Isenbarger said about that first visit on the final day of classes in December 2016.

Isenbarger said the outpouring continues today in myriad of ways, from a larger desk for a teacher to a cache of Frisbees and soccer balls for students.

Chris Saneholtz (right), School Rocks Party Box vice president, Phyllis Hall (center), mother of SRPB founder and director Tia Gannon (not pictured), and Mark Gannon, SRPB treasurer and Tia Gannon's husband, package donated school supplies to be delivered to students in need Sept. 13 at the Gannon home in Dublin.

Sarah Foster, principal at North Linden Elementary School, calls Gannon the school's "guardian angel."

"It started with books, but then it became snacks for the kids and teacher-appreciation gifts, too," Foster said.

Gannon, her family and a cadre of supporters also provide goods and programming beyond crayons and pencils.

Students at the four elementary schools also receive books.

Before COVID-19 restrictions, Gannon would help organize book fairs and hold classroom parties for particular holidays and observances, such as Valentine’s Day.

“We would come to a school with (blank) Valentine cards to give to students so they could write them out and give to each other,” Gannon said.

Although the coronavirus pandemic continues to curtail social events she once arranged, School Rocks Party Box continues to provide books, school supplies and “Keep Warm Kits,” with hats, gloves and ChapStick, to students who might be in need.

That need, Gannon said, ran deeper than she realized when she sent a 2016 message on the Dublin Moms in the Know Facebook page asking if anyone, particularly Dublin mothers, were teachers or knew of teachers at other schools at which students might be in need.

“I was a ‘room mom’ for my sons (at Dublin and at private schools), and we planned all kinds of things for our kiddos, (but) I knew not every child is that fortunate,” she said.

Gannon said the seed for her initiative likely was planted when she visited an inner-city Columbus food pantry with Kathy Jackson.

Gannon responded to an invitation from Jackson, a Dublin resident also active in Dublin schools, to help in her volunteerism at open shelters.

Although Gannon was serving adults at the shelter, she said, the experience “inspired her” to consider how she could help children who are underprivileged.

It didn’t take long after her first message on Dublin Moms in the Know for her effort to gain traction.

“Donations began showing up on my doorstep,” Gannon said, and it soon became necessary to cordon off a part of the garage to sort and store the donations.

In 2017, to gain the advantage of receiving financial contributions from corporations and applying for grants, she and Mark Gannon, who serves as its treasurer, incorporated School Rocks Party Box as a nonprofit organization.

The organization’s name was conceived during a road trip to a Jimmy Buffett concert in Michigan, Gannon recalled.

Gannon already had dubbed the uniform plastic boxes – purchased in bulk for about $1 each and used to keep school supplies – as a "party box."

“What rhymes with ‘box’?” Gannon said she mused before their traveling partner, Steve Sinfield, came up with "school rocks."

Although aware of the needs of some children, the first year still was an eye-opener, Gannon said.

“I couldn’t drive home without crying,” said Gannon, recalling how some children called it the "best day" of their life after experiencing a simple classroom party or receiving a simple handheld toy or puzzle.

Today, Gannon said, it is more smiles as children at the schools she visits greet her as "Mrs. Tia."

To learn more about School Rocks Party Box, visit the organization's Facebook page or send an email to schoolrockspartybox@yahoo.com.

kcorvo@thisweeknews.com

@ThisWeekCorvo