A fourth grader at McCall Elementary School embraces the motto on the school's walls: What begins here changes the world.
Jayci Stubblefield hopes she can change the world for her friend Rylea Lambert. The girls met in the second grade. Two years later, they are stuck like glue.
"I started playing with her and she turned out to be a really fun friend," Jayci said.
"Those two girls are best friends," principal Jason Beatty said. "You will never find two girls who laugh more with one another."
Rylea is often the giggle box with an infectious laugh that makes others smile, too. Jayci, though, remembers the day 10-year-old Rylea's laughter turned to tears.
"Rylea couldn't go on the playground and she started to cry for me one day," 9-year-old Jayci said. "She didn't have anybody to play with."
Rylea, born with cerebral palsy, rolls through her school's hallways with ease in her wheelchair, but her wheelchair cannot navigate the pea gravel on the playground.
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"I kept saying in my mind, 'Why doesn't every kid get to play?'" Jayci wondered. "And I was like, 'Every kid deserves the chance to play.' No kid is different except for the way they learn. That's all that's different."
Jayci was determined to right what she saw as a wrong. She found a solution and took it to principal Beatty.
"She said, "We need to come up with a different surface so her wheelchair will go across so she can access the playground, and she needs a swing,' Beatty said. "She'd already done some research and gave me photographs of wheelchair swings that you can roll the wheelchairs right up on to the swings and lock them in. We found out the cost was a lot more than either one of us thought it would be."
The swing cost $10,000. It turned out, though, that resurfacing the playgrounds at Aledo ISD's four elementary schools was part of a bond package that voters approved in May.
The next step was to find money for the wheelchair swing. Jayci and Rylea appealed to the Aledo ISD Education Foundation.
"I went and talked to 40 board members and made them cry and her mom and my dad and my mom and her dad," Jayci said.
"You saw all they wanted was the chance to play with their other friends," foundation president Tricia Carter-Haber said. "I tell you, my big burly dads cried. All the way down to my moms and teachers."
The foundation wants a wheelchair swing for all four elementary schools in the district, but getting the money will take a big effort. Rules that govern how the foundation spends money prevents it from buying the swing, so the foundation is reaching to private donors with a video on its website and word-of-mouth.
"40,000 total is the goal.We're about a fourth of the way there," Carter-Haber said. "The sooner we can raise this money, the better odds we have of making this goal happen this year while Rylea is still at this campus."
Jayci wants to do her part, too. The swing was her idea and she is determined to help raise the $40,000 so all special needs children in the district have a chance to play. A page called Jayci's Heart on the fundraising website Go Fund Me seeks donations. She's also selling bracelets for $5 and T-shirts for $20.
"On the front of the shirts, it says, 'J and R,' for Jaycie and Rylea," Jayci said. "And on the back, it says, 'Every kid deserves a chance to play."
And, every kid deserves to have a friendship like theirs.
More
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/Jaycis-Heart-517093111787644/
- Twitter: twitter.com/jaycisheart
- GoFundMe: www.gofundme.com/jaycisheart
- Aledo Education Foundation: www.aledoef.org/
