On Wednesday morning, some Lee County teachers showed up before dawn to wait on lawn chairs for a giveaway of supplies sponsored by the United Way and the Foundation for Lee County Public Schools.

Yohan Arana of the Foundation for Lee County Schools was on hand in downtown Fort Myers to help load supplies into cars.

"People have been stationed out here since about four or five in the morning, waiting until our event opened up at 7:30 to collect a bunch of materials and resources here for their classrooms," he said.

This was a joint effort of the foundation and the United Way of Lee, Hendry and Glades counties to hand out almost $200,000 worth of supplies.

"We had a lot of bulletin boards, we had chairs, filing cabinets, Christmas and Easter, all sorts of stuff that they can use for their classroom, that teachers can use for their classroom.

"A lot of it was donated to us from United Way. Some other donations are just stuff we've had here from organizations and individuals who have decided to donate.

"And so we've had this stuff stored away for a while and we thought, you know, let's make a day where we can try to give most of it away to all the teachers that need it."

Eric Negroni, a Mariner High School band director, was one of about 300 teachers who showed up.

"We're here getting supplies for the classroom to start the new year off right.
Office supplies, there's a lot of like festive decorations for holidays and stuff like that.
And there's also some furniture for the classroom that's nice, like filing cabinets, tables, chairs."

Without giveaways like this, teachers often use their own money to furnish their classrooms.

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