SANTA ROSA – With the holidays looming, North Bay educators and their local CTA union chapters are alerting the public about their continuing efforts to help fellow teachers, students and families in Sonoma, Napa and other counties who lost homes cope with the holidays and beyond.

The needs in the education community are immense, six weeks after the fires began Oct. 8.  In the 40 Sonoma County school districts alone, at least 1,300 students, 150 teachers and 85 support staff lost homes, the county’s Office of Education estimates.

Thanksgiving will be hard for students and parents who lost homes, says Santa Rosa Teachers Association President Will Lyon. “You imagine all the times you were with your family at Thanksgiving, and now your house is gone,” he said, adding that teachers are continuing to help the healing process, while some deal with their own hardships.

Here are some of the North Bay teacher union fire relief projects still making a difference:

—Santa Rosa Teachers Association: With nearly 40 teachers in the Santa Rosa City Schools district having lost homes in the fires, the SRTA is continuing its online YouCaring fundraising site for colleagues. The union has raised nearly $36,000 of its $50,000 goal so far and is making countless micro-grants to teachers who lost homes or were displaced. In addition, the public can also donate at another SRTA link that lists specific needs of teachers, by name, who lost homes or classrooms in the fires.

—Hidden Valley Elementary: About a quarter of the 600 students lost homes at this Santa Rosa City Schools campus, which also saw its Satellite School serving another 80 students burn down. In an extraordinary community effort, Hidden Valley teacher Paul Drake launched a donation center at 741 4^th St., in an empty storefront in downtown Santa Rosa, with the help of parents and volunteers; it’s open on Saturdays to distribute free toys, canned food, blankets, children’s clothing, shoes, blankets, bedding and other items that arrived by the truckloads from the Bay Area and beyond. Drake has launched a new project asking the public to “adopt” one of about 80 impacted Hidden Valley families to fill their specific needs with specific donations. See photos and more information about the donation center at the website Drake created.

“It’s just important to me and to all of us to do everything we can to support these families that are such a huge part of our lives,” Drake says. “They’ve gone through such a trauma here.”

Drake, a second-grade teacher, discussed the donation center’s mission in a brief CTA video interview on Oct. 28.

—CTA Redwood Service Center Council: Serving educators in eight counties, including fire-damaged Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Lake, this Service Center Council is accepting donations for educators in multiple counties until Dec. 31 on its GoFundMe site. Funds will be distributed to affected teachers in January.

—CTA Disaster Relief Fund: CTA members impacted by the fires can apply for grants of up to $3,000 from the CTA Disaster Relief Fund. So far, the fund has made about 109 grants to North Bay educators totaling $190,000, with many more applications still being processed. This vital union disaster fund is funded by voluntary contributions from CTA members statewide, and through fundraising drives throughout the year.

—Santa Rosa School Supplies and Book Drive: The public can help replace classroom school supplies and books lost when the Hidden Valley Satellite School burned down, and the fires damaged Roseland Collegiate Prep in the Roseland School District. See the lists here.

Resources for educators and others in the burn zones – and donation information – are at www.cta.org/firesupport, a site that will continue to be updated in the months ahead.

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The 325,000-member California Teachers Association is
affiliated with the 3 million-member National Education Association.