HSTA honors co-founder of free store on Kauai

One of the first teachers to ever shop at Kumu’s Cupboard — a nonprofit store that provides free classroom supplies to Kauai educators — had a surprising reaction: She walked out to her truck and cried.

“I’m thinking, Oh, was somebody rude to you? What happened?” recalls Elyse Litvack, Kumu’s Cupboard president and co-founder. “She said, ‘I’ve taught in the district for 10 years, and this is the first time I know that the community cares about what I’m doing.’”

Since 2017, the storefront in Kukui Grove Center in Lihue has been inviting educators who work at any Kauai public, charter or private school to shop there once a month by using an inventory list that tells them how much of each item they can take, then browsing the store for items they need.

When they are ready to check out, the bill is always zero dollars.

Kumu’s Cupboard’s “widespread ability to impact students in such a positive and important way” led the Hawaii State Teachers Association to honor Litvack last month with its 2023 Friend of Youth Award.

The award recognizes an outstanding HSTA member who works to support Hawaii youth. Nominees “must be involved in a youth-­oriented activity outside of their professional duties, dedicate time and service to this cause, and demonstrate significant impact on youth,” the union’s website says.

Litvack, a retired elementary school educator who taught for 30 years in Seattle, said in an HSTA news ­release that she ­believes that “teachers need to know that the community supports them.”

The way Kumu’s Cupboard works: People and businesses donate school supplies and materials for art, science and other subjects. They also donate cash. The site looks like a ­retail store full of classroom supplies. But educators who visit don’t pay a cent.

The state Department of Education “doesn’t always provide everything that classrooms need, and we know that teachers spend a lot of money out of their pockets, and Kumu’s Cupboard saw a space where they could help out teachers to ensure that every student in every classroom could have whatever they needed to be successful,” Sarah Tochiki, HSTA Kauai Chapter president and band director at Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School, said in an HSTA statement.

Tochiki nominated Kumu’s Cupboard on behalf of the chapter’s executive board.

An analysis by The New York Times last year found that teachers typically spend about $500 out of pocket each year on supplies for the classroom and for students.

Kumu’s Cupboard offers not only supplies, books and equipment, but also a lending service section, with microscopes, math manipulatives, teaching kits, musical instruments and more. A wall of gently used items invites teachers to take as much as they want. And backpacks filled with supplies tailored for students in grades K-1 and 2-5, middle and high school are available any time for teachers to grab for students who need then.

Tochiki said when students lack supplies, “I can really discreetly go and just hand them something that I’ve picked up from Kumu’s Cupboard, and that’s been a blessing to be able to do, because then they don’t even have to worry that they don’t have something, or they don’t have to worry that the teacher is going to be nagging them.”

Jonathon Medeiros, a Kauai High language arts teacher who also serves on the union’s human and civil rights committee, said the hope is that the Kumu’s Cupboard model can be replicated in other parts of the state. “That really would be kind of the dream outcome of this,” he said.