Despite more than a thousand miles between them, community members within a Cambria County school district are working to collect funds and goods to send to a Texas school district damaged by Hurricane Harvey.

Central Cambria Middle School Principal Chris Santini said he and other Central Cambria School District administrators chose to “adopt” Texas’ Deweyville Independent School District at a recent meeting.

“Everybody wants to help, so we considered a lot of different options,” Santini said.

Through social media, local officials were able to make contact with the Texas Association of Student Councils, which provided a spreadsheet showing hurricane impacted districts and listing their needs, Santini said.

Deweyville was one of many districts flooded after Hurricane Harvey produced heavy rainfall over Texas late last month.

“Over half of their teachers’ homes are flooded; a lot of their students are displaced at the moment,” Santini said, noting the Texas district will remained closed for at least two weeks.

Santini said he was able to communicate with the Texas district’s superintendent, who stressed the severity of the situation, explaining the district faced similar flooding in 2016.

Last year, rainfall and releases from an area dam flooded a Deweyville elementary school campus, causing an estimated

$12 million in damage, according to an NBC Dallas-Fort Worth report.

“He said, ‘Look, anything that you can do will be appreciated and helpful,'” Santini said, referring to his communication with the Texas superintendent. “It’s a small school district kind of like we are.”

Now, Central Cambria administrators are spearheading an initiative to gather donations, which will be sent to Texas to aid individual teachers and students affected by the disaster, as well as the district, which has sustained costly losses, Santini said.

Starting Tuesday, administrators placed collection boxes in their buildings, where students and other visitors can make cash donations. The collection boxes will remain in the buildings through at least the remainder of the week, Santini said.

Those donations will then be used to purchase gift cards, which will be sent to the Texas district.

Donations also will be accepted at Friday evening’s home football game, the first of the year, and money raised during a faculty dress-down day will be sent to disaster victims, Santini said.

“Whatever they need, that is what we are going to give them,” he said, noting other fundraising events may be held.

No fundraising goal has been set, Santini said.

“We have no idea,” he said. “The more, the merrier.”

The district’s contracted busing company is pitching in, too. From 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. today and Thursday, First Student Inc., the busing company, will have buses parked in front of Central Cambria High School and Jackson Elementary School.

Community members can make physical donations — diapers, hygiene products, pet food, canned goods, trash bags and cleaning supplies — to the buses, First Student Location Manager Debbie Ley said.

“The school district was the one that decided to partner up,” she said. “It’s just a group effort.”

After the two days of collection, donations will be driven to Johnstown, where they will then be shipped to the Deweyville district in southeastern Texas.

Mirror Staff Writer Sean Sauro is at 946-7535.