Kiwanis Club donates backpacks to Francis McClure students

By JEFF STITT

jstitt@yourmvi.com

McKeesport Area School District students are headed back to school Wednesday.

Thanks to the McKeesport Kiwanis Club and the Debra A. Bertoty Scholarship Fund, families of 24 Francis McClure Elementary School students won’t have to worry about purchasing backpacks this school year.

John and Sandra Bertoty, who — both McKeesport Kiwanians and the mother and father of Debra Bertoty — along with Kiwanian Gina Rosso presented Principal David Listorti with 24 fully loaded book bags packed with school supplies.

“Kiwanians offered the backpacks ready to go,” said John, the McKeesport Kiwanis Club president. “Kiwanis International had a contact with a good price. Rather than having to pay the backpacks with our Kiwanis fundraising monies, we decided to use funding from the Debra A. Bertoty Scholarship Fund to purchase the backpack. Gina Rosso coordinated it all.”

The fund was created in memory of Debra, who died Feb. 16, 2019, at age 46 from an illness that affected her liver. She was a dedicated special education teacher at Francis McClure in White Oak, according to her parents.

John, who is retired now but was the building principal at McKeesport High School for many years, said he, Sandra and Kiwanis Club members asked Listori to have guidance counselors distribute the bags to students who come from low-income families or are in special education classes.

“There are a number of youngsters here who come from low-income families,” John said. “Now these families won’t have to worry about buying a backpack or the supplies. Families that can’t afford it now have pens, pencils, crayons, markers, glue sticks and all the stuff that’s good for a kid to have.

“We are Kiwanians and our objective is to help children, one child, one community at a time. These kinds of projects hit home in an area like this.”

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