Opening and Thanks
The venue for this month’s CNO 2.0 meeting on Thursday, July 16, 2026, was Rumbleseat Wine, in the Cross Pointe Center at 101 E. Alex Bell Rd #118, Centerville, Ohio 45459. Connie Risch welcomed the members who came out for the evening and thanked owners Urmila and Chris Holloway and their team for the great food, wine, and space.
Club Updates
Connie Risch reported that the July 2026 board meeting had not yet been held, so the club had no new donations to announce since the last CNO 2.0 meeting. She pointed instead to two recent highlights:
- The Centerville Noon Optimist Club presented a $50,000 check to the Washington-Centerville Public Library at the July 7, 2026 lunch, the club’s largest recent gift. The funds support interactive elements in the children’s area at the Centerville Library and equipment in the expanded Creativity Commons makerspace.
- The club’s 34th annual Tom Frazier Tee-Off for Youth Golf Outing was held on Monday, July 13, 2026. Final numbers are not yet available, but the outing sold out its field of golfers and drew outstanding sponsors along with strong silent auction and raffle baskets. The proceeds will fund even more youth activities, along with a donation to Dayton Children’s Hospital in September 2026.
Announcements
Big Backyard Party
The club’s Big Backyard Party is on Saturday, July 25, 2026, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Oak Grove Park. The event is sponsored by the Centerville-Washington Park District and the Centerville Noon Optimist Club, and activities will include numerous inflatables, fishing, archery, field games, face painting, and much more. The club runs the casting station, where members help children learn to fish using no hooks and no bait, so every catch is a safe one, and no fishing experience is needed. Please sign up using the Member Calendar.
Kid’s Day in the Park
The Kid’s Day in the Park is on Saturday, August 1, 2026, at Delco Park in Kettering, held in collaboration with other local Optimist clubs. The event is a completely free, fun-filled day for the entire family, with a free lunch served at noon. If you would like to help run the event, please sign up using the Member Calendar.
Suggestions for CNO 2.0
Connie Risch asked the members and guests on behalf of Greg Fay what changes they would like to see at CNO 2.0, what would encourage them to invite more guests, and whether they had any speaker or venue recommendations. Members of the CNO 2.0 committee stood so that everyone could see who they were. Please contact Greg Fay or any of the committee members with any suggestions for changes, speakers, or venues, and the committee will do its best to accommodate them.
Crayons to Classrooms with Jaida Anderson
Connie Risch introduced Jaida Anderson, the Volunteer Coordinator at Crayons to Classrooms, who told the club about the organization, the teachers and students it serves, and the service project members would take on that evening.
Who Crayons to Classrooms Serves
Jaida explained that Crayons to Classrooms is a nonprofit organization that serves teachers in the Dayton area and surrounding counties at schools where 60 percent or more of students qualify for the free and reduced lunch program. Its mission is to secure and distribute school supplies at no cost to teachers, and its vision is to ensure every student has the school supplies they need to succeed. The free and reduced lunch program is how the organization gauges where the need is greatest. In the 2026-2027 school year, Crayons to Classrooms will serve 150 schools in the Dayton area and 10 childcare centers, which means more than 4,000 teachers can shop with the organization and more than 50,000 students are impacted. The free store is located at 1750 Woodman Drive in Dayton, which the organization shares with the Goodwill outlet. The furthest it reaches is Preble County, nearly to Indiana, and it serves about seven counties in all.
How the Store Works
Only teachers can shop at the store, and mainly those at eligible schools. Teachers schedule an appointment with a 15-minute arrival window and can then shop for as long as they like, with store hours from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. so that teachers can come after school. Teachers shop once a semester and twice in a single school year, from August through November and again from January through May. On average a teacher takes about $700 worth of items, though a teacher who took everything in the store would leave with more than $3,000 worth.
Everything in the store is donated. Crayons to Classrooms is one of 35 affiliates of the Kids In Need Foundation, a national network whose resource centers trade materials and share ideas with one another. Many of the organization’s largest supply donations, from companies such as Mead and Dixon Ticonderoga, come through that partnership. Jaida noted that the Cincinnati center had visited that very day, and that Ohio has three centers in all, in Dayton, Cincinnati, and Cleveland.
Stuff the Bus
The organization is in the middle of its Stuff the Bus supply drive, its most popular campaign, which runs in July 2026 so the store can be stocked for the beginning of the school year. Jaida thanked the club for the supply drive members had already run, pointing to the materials collected at the back of the room. The most needed items right now are markers, colored pencils, children’s scissors, pocket folders, filler paper, crayons, construction paper, glue sticks, 70-count notebooks, and pencils.
Volunteering
As Volunteer Coordinator, Jaida described the many ways to help. The most popular role is Classroom Solutions, where volunteers work with die cut machines and paper cutters to make items for teachers’ lesson plans and classroom decorations. Volunteers also work in the store itself, checking teachers in when they arrive, checking them out much as a retail store would, and floating around the store to help as Shopping Assistants. The organization also runs off-site projects like the one the club took on that evening.
Volunteering can also earn a shop for any teacher, even one who is not at an eligible school. Five hours of volunteering earns a single shop, and a teacher already at an eligible school earns an additional shop for the year. Those five hours do not have to come from one person: they can be earned by a single volunteer or by a combination of people who donate their hours to a teacher. Jaida offered Milton Union as an example, where retired teachers come in weekly in groups of four and donate all of their hours to the teachers at that school.
The Impact
Since its first shop in 2009, Crayons to Classrooms has distributed more than $40 million in free school supplies, and it has been in its current building since 2016. Each year local teachers take part in a survey from the Kids In Need Foundation, and Jaida shared the results from the most recent impact report:
- 87 percent of teachers say that access to free school supplies increases the variety and scope of the projects they can offer.
- 93 percent of teachers share that they can create more equitable learning environments with the supplies they receive from Crayons to Classrooms.
- 94 percent of teachers report that supplies from the resource center are important for class preparedness.
Jaida also read a quote from a teacher at Springfield City Schools: “Being able to shop at a place like Crayons to Classrooms not only helps me feel appreciated as a teacher, but it also helps me supply my students with things that will help them be successful in the learning that takes place in the classroom. There are things that I use on an almost daily basis in my classroom to help with organization as well as supply to my students when necessary. I truly appreciate the generosity of those who donate in order to help further the education of students, from the smallest and simplest contributions to the largest, and anything in between.”
The Service Project
Members spent the rest of the evening assembling 500 journals for students. Each journal is a front cover, a back cover, and pages inside, kept deliberately basic so that students who receive them can use them however they see fit.
Thank You
Thank you, Jaida Anderson, and thank you to Crayons to Classrooms, for showing us how much a box of school supplies can mean to a teacher and a classroom.
New Member Readings and Inductions
- David Giffin, Second Reading, sponsored by Erin Giffin.