By JANESE HEAVIN of the Tribune\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s staff<\/p>\n
Preschoolers attending Hallsville\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new primary school this fall will have new handmade wooden furniture, thanks to about a dozen Missouri prison inmates.<\/p>\n
Inmates at the Tipton Correctional Center have spent the past couple of months building bookshelves, tables and dressers for two early education classrooms at the school. The facility\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s woodworking group is part of a restorative justice program that aims to give prisoners ways to give back to communities.
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\n Hallsville teacher Shaunna Turner knew about the prison\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s woodworking program because of donations prisoners made to Boonville schools a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n
Last spring, she contacted them to see whether they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to help furnish the new Hallsville Primary School, which will open to preschool, kindergarten and first grades on Aug. 16.<\/p>\n
“The inmates were so nice,” Turner said. “And they were happy to have the project.”<\/p>\n
School volunteers picked up 36 pieces of furniture last week and have spent a few days priming it. Turner said she and a few other teachers originally planned to paint the pieces by hand but realized it would take too long. Instead, her husband and father-in-law have agreed to spray paint the furniture.<\/p>\n
Turner said the district spent about $2,000 on the wood and paint. She estimated that having the prisoners build the furniture instead of buying it saved the school district at least $6,000.<\/p>\n
“There would be absolutely no way we could have afforded all of this had we ordered it from a catalogue,” she said.<\/p>\n
Hallsville Superintendent Tom Baugh said he was pleased to see Turner and other volunteers take on the project to save the district money.<\/p>\n
“It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a really good win-win for us, and I hope for them, too,” he said.<\/p>\n
Tipton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s woodworking inmates contribute to schools as well as several community events and benefit auctions for families in need, said Jill McGuire, superintendent of the Tipton prison. They regularly supply carved pieces for Relay For Life events and the Salvation Army in Jefferson City.<\/p>\n
The prisoners are known for their rocking horses, child-size rocking chairs and carved turkey and duck calls. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve also made some more creative pieces, including a child-size motorcycle rocker, McGuire said.<\/p>\n
They also cut wooden pieces for the Missouri Department of Conservation, which provides them to urban schoolchildren who assemble birdhouses.<\/p>\n
The inmates enjoy the work and they like helping others, McGuire said.<\/p>\n
“It makes them feel good to know they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing something to help other families and children,” McGuire said. “They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re proud, and they should be. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talented.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By JANESE HEAVIN of the Tribune\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s staff Preschoolers attending Hallsville\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new primary school this fall will have new handmade wooden furniture, thanks to about a dozen Missouri prison inmates. Inmates at the Tipton Correctional Center have spent the past couple of months building bookshelves, tables and dressers for two early education classrooms at the school. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-furniture-indonesia-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}