Word spread quickly through in a Pittsburgh, Pa, high school last week, when students learned that the administrative offices were filled with Barack Obama paraphernalia.Students snapped up posters and stickers at Sto-Rox High School for their lockers, backpacks and bedroom walls, eager to commemorate the victory of the first African American to ascend to the nation's highest office.The enthusiasm excited administrators, but it's not what brought tears to the eyes of Jean Schmalzreid, the school district's director of federal programs and special projects. That happened when she saw school facilities workers bring in dolly after dolly piled high with thousands of dollars worth of supplies donated from Obama campaign offices in Pittsburgh.Six computers will be dedicated to creating learning centers for struggling middle school students. An all-in-one printer, copier and fax machine will hum all day in the middle school library. And the art department received piles of markers, paint and poster board.They were part of a program Obama's campaign, funded better than any in the history of American politics, devised in partnership with iLoveSchools.com, a web site that helps connect teachers with organizations that donate school supplies.Nearly 200 campaign offices in 10 states pledged to participate, in what has easily been the web site's largest single donation effort."(President-elect Obama's) outreach just means the world to us," Schmalzreid said. "The man had the foresight to plan this. In the middle of a huge national campaign, he's thinking about poor children."Valarie Swanson, marketing director for San Diego-based iLoveSchools.com, said the Obama campaign contacted the web site a few weeks ago to organize donations.In places with high concentrations of campaign offices, including western Pennsylvania, a key campaign battleground, organizers reached out to poorer school districts. Local districts were assigned three offices each from which they could take whatever they liked, provided they retrieved the materials themselves.In the Pittsburgh area, that included Clairton School District, where 85 percent of students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches last year, and Sto-Rox, where the figure was 65 percent."It's so beautiful to see these things being disseminated over here because our kids have nothing," Schmalzreid said. "Some of our families struggle to put food on the table and struggle to get their kids warm coats for winter."She added that the office supplies -- including reams of unused printer paper and other items still in boxes -- will put a considerable dent in next year's budget to allow spending on other needs.Aside from the monetary value, there's a civics lesson here. Students who have followed the race in class now can touch a piece of history, or put it on their walls."For the first time in a long time, there's a real sense of possibility here," Schmalzreid said. "A lot of our kids are thinking, 'Hey, if he can do it, I can do it.' " E-mail Daniel Malloy at dmalloy(at)post-gazette.com(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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