Last Spring, local company SuperATV agreed to purchase school supplies for the entire Madison Consolidated District. While many people probably envision crayons and scissors, the supplies were not just extended to the youngest of MCS students. The high school was also the beneficiary of SuperATV’s generosity, and high school students and parents felt relief in the form of possibly hundreds of dollars in student supply costs.

Michael Gasaway, Principal of Madison Consolidated High School said he had the discussion about SuperATV helping with school supplies last year with the Superintendent, Dr. Jeff Studebaker.

Studebaker worked with SuperATV to set up the details. According to Gasaway, the whole process of planning “…was not difficult at all.” 

Also according to Gasaway, some families have saved up to $800 from not having to buy school supplies for their enrolled students this year. Gasaway also posited that those families may be able to go on family vacations during fall or winter break because of the money they saved, and the school is hoping that this is something that will continue over the years. 

Another windfall for MCHS due to the free supplies is that more students have enrolled. In the school district, we were supposed to be about 150 students short of last year’s enrollment. Today, the school has one more student enrolled in the school than there was last year. 

Even though we’re now approaching the middle of September, the school still has not gotten all of their supplies. Such as binders, notebooks, and pencils. 

“They (SuperATV) are still ordering supplies so we don’t have a definite number of how many supplies they’ve purchased for us.”

Even though everything has not yet been delivered. Much of the supplies have made their way into the school and on to the various programs that ordered the supplies.

“It looked like Christmas morning,” Gasaway said. 

SuperATV even bought graphing calculators which are around $110 each.

“It’s really special that Madison is able to offer this to our students and we wouldn’t be able to do it without SuperATV,” Gasaway said.

The English Language Arts department spent a few thousand dollars in supplies just for the high school.  Some more supplies that were bought were, paper, pencils, pens, three subject notebooks, five subject notebooks, single subject notebooks, and composition notebooks. 

Language Arts Program Leader, Jake Shockley stated, “We were able to procure 150 pairs of headphones for the foreign language department so every student could have a pair of headphones to listen to some of the software that the students can learn from.”

Also thanks to the donation, the ELA department was able to spend the money they usually spend on some items they might not have had money for. With the extra money, the program was able to buy novels for classes like To Kill a Mockingbird and were able to get special software for French.

“While opening all of the boxes can get kind of messy, getting all of these materials has been a godsend,” Shockley said.