Springs native mines box tops in TV-land to help mom's school

All the work that goes into producing this year’s television special on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is going to benefit one of the poorest schools in Colorado Springs School District 11.

Really.

Here’s how: The production team will eat a lot of snacks and use a lot of office products, and Colorado Springs native Joanie Michele will be there to cut all the “Boxtops for Education” off the packages.

Later, she’ll paste them on special sheets, 10 to a sheet, and send those to her mom, Julie Garcia, an English language teacher at Monroe Elementary School. The sheets will be added to what the school collects and submitted to the program for reimbursement at a dollar a sheet.

It’s all about connections and causes.

Michele, a 1999 Harrison High School grad who’s a freelance script supervisor in the television world, is the connection. And collecting Boxtops to help her mom’s school has became her “little cause” this fall.

The General Mills Boxtops for Education program has donated more than $300 million to schools since 1996, according to the program Web site. Each specially marked boxtop is worth 10 cents for schools signed up with the program.

On Thursday, Michele dropped off 42 sheets – worth $42 dollars – and told pupils at a brief assembly how people who work in TV are helping their school. She also sends her mom pictures from shows she’s working on – the Miss Universe Pageant in the Bahamas, the Obama inauguration, a Carrie Underwood special – to share with the students.

“It gets the kids excited about it,” she said. “I’m just one person trying to get all these people to collect Boxtops for Monroe.”

Michele has always collected Boxtops – after all, she said, just about everyone in the family is a teacher. But when she recently noticed the Boxtops on Avery office products, she enlisted friends to join her cause.

“We’ll put together and give out 50 binders for one show, so that’s 50 labels,” said Michele, who lives in New York.

So Monroe is getting Boxtops from script supervisors on “Saturday Night Live” and people who work for other TV shows. Those are Michele’s connections in her fast-paced work world.

Boxtop collecting is a nice connection to her family in Colorado Springs – and fun, too, she said. She recalled that when all the Fruit Roll-ups, granola bars and other food arrived on one set, she and some friends quickly cut the Boxtops from the packages before any were used and thrown out.

But when the organizers realized there was too much food and started to collect it to send back, they were stopped in their tracks.

“They wondered why there were these little holes in all the boxes,” Michele said. “We just said, ‘oh don’t worry about taking it back. It’ll get eaten.’”

ABOUT JAMES MONROE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Enrollment: 450
Percentage receiving free/reduced price lunch: 90 percent
Percentage of English language learners: 44 percent
The school is trying to raise $2,500 through the Boxtops for Education program to purchase a Mac computer for the lab so students can learn more graphic applications for their work. The fund has about $400.
Boxtops for Education can be dropped off at the school. For more information on Monroe’s program, contact Carol Grimes at 328-7423.
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Call the writer at 636-0251.