“Nothing is as exciting to kids as a new pencil,” says Karen Rost, the chapter leader at PS 59, a UFT Community Learning School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Students at PS 59 got an extra dose of excitement on Nov. 15 when representatives from the online supply company Yoobi visited the school to present boxes full of pens, pencils, crayons, sharpeners, erasers and more. “They were essential things for school, things they really need and things we as teachers have purchased with our own money,” says Kimberley Sydney, a kindergarten teacher. “We send home supply lists and only a third of the class has brought supplies back, so the kids appreciated the gifts they were given.” In partnership with the Kids in Need Foundation, Yoobi will be donating classroom kits to every elementary school teacher in Brooklyn’s District 14, as well as school supplies for 33,000 elementary school students across the five boroughs. The donations are part of the company’s “one for you, one for me” model, in which Yoobi donates an item to a classroom in need for every item purchased on its website. UFT members are eligible for a special 25 percent discount on school supplies at www.yoobi.com/uft. UFT President Michael Mulgrew and Vice President for Elementary Schools Karen Alford, who is the head of the UFT Community Learning Schools Initiative, also attended the event. “A lot of our kids don’t have supplies even at this point in the year, so it’s a big weight off our shoulders to not have to worry about it or buy them ourselves,” says Rost. “It means a lot to our school.”