Irving non-profit helping students, teachers seeks help following $15K in flood damage

IRVING, Texas - An Irving non-profit that serves Irving ISD students is asking for help after last week's flooding caused more than $15,000 worth of damage at its warehouse.

The Irving Schools Foundation provides things like uniforms, food, school supplies, and scholarships to children, parents and teachers in Irving. 

After sustaining quite a bit of damage last month, they say they don't have the funding to make repairs and continue to operate all of their programs.

CEO Crystal Scanio describes getting the call that the Irving Schools Foundation warehouse had flooded on Aug. 22.

"It was from the roof. It came in from the walls," she said. "It was a terrible day. One of our biggest nightmares."

The floors on back side of the facility were covered in water.

"You can see where it sat in water for a while. It looks like a crack, but it’s not," Scanio said.

The television used for volunteer training was destroyed along with a bucket of travel-sized toiletries and their $9,000 forklift used to move supplies.

Wooden storage shelves are now headed to the dumpster after volunteers found them lined with mold.

The nonprofit provides school supplies, food, backpacks and uniforms free of charge to families and teachers. 

Thankfully, the wall of student lunches and backpacks were unaffected.

For now, volunteers are operating out of the front of the building. They are still busy helping teachers stock up on supplies.

"Coming here to this store is really helpful because we can get the things we need without having to use our own money," said teacher Ruby Anne.

But after two years without fundraising events during the pandemic, Scanio says the nonprofit is running out of resources.

"We have zero money in reserve," she said. "We’re actually probably in the negative on some parts, and we’ve had to get creative."

Scanio’s hope is to get more volunteers and donations. Otherwise, the non-profit would have to close.

"My goal would be to never turn a child away, but unfortunately we’d have to shut down other programs that we have," she said.

One of those programs is the SparkTank, which was inspired by the show SharkTank. There, students pitch ideas about things they’d like to see in their classrooms.

Scanio says they had just brought it back this school year after two years off, but it could be cut if they aren't able to raise enough money soon.