Teacher overwhelmed by response to her request for period products for Texas students

A teacher at an Austin charter school said she received “well over 300 boxes” of pads and liners in response to her request for period products on an Amazon classroom wish list.

“It was absolutely amazing,” Kylie DeFrance, a teacher at Austin Achieve Public Schools, told McClatchy News. “I cried many, many tears of happiness and joy.”

DeFrance teaches eighth grade at the school — a tuition-free, public charter school where nearly all the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. She said throughout her career as a teacher she has been committed to providing period products for free to students who may have difficulty accessing them.

“Since day one of teaching, I have always kept pad bags in my classroom for my female scholars,” she said. “I noticed that I was spending a little bit more each month, and more and more and more, and I was like, ‘You know what? I’m just going to make an Amazon wish list. I’m going to put six boxes of pads on there.’”

Teachers across the country use Amazon wish lists to help get supplies for their classrooms that they would otherwise buy themselves.

DeFrance said boxes of pads and liners began showing up at her door. On day three of receiving them, she had counted 268 boxes and continued to receive many more after that, she said.

“Honestly, maybe I thought two boxes would come,” she said. “It was an overwhelming amount of support.”

DeFrance said the outpouring of support highlights the need for schools to provide menstrual products, which many students have trouble obtaining due to lack of access, financial concerns or stigma.

“It is not fair that some of them feel too embarrassed or humiliated to ask their own parents or ask an office member for a product,” she said. “It is not fair that we can easily provide all these other materials in the bathroom and not think anything of it, but when we mention pads or tampons or heating pads, it’s an instant fight… It should just be a standard at this point, honestly.”

She said she also received many messages from community members who told their own stories of how they struggled as young people to access menstrual products.

A former teacher, who asked not to be identified, told her that when she was 13 she got caught stealing tampons from a grocery store.

“I wanted to go to school and was scared to go with the public restroom paper towels in my underwear because my disabled mom couldn’t afford to get me anything better,” she wrote in a text message shared with McClatchy News. “I actually went to juvie for 11 days and ended up doing 40 hours of community service because I stole those tampons.”

California, New York, Illinois, New Hampshire, and Virginia have so far passed legislation requiring that schools provide free menstrual products to students, according to Free the Tampons, a nonprofit advocating for free access to period products in public restrooms.

For DeFrance, it’s about removing stigma around periods so that female students feel comfortable and supported in school.

“You wouldn’t sit in class with a bloody nose and not have anything done about it,” she said. “(Period products) need to be in the bathrooms, accessible to all the females in every grade level from fifth grade to 12th grade.”

This story was originally published April 6, 2022 at 4:38 PM with the headline "Teacher overwhelmed by response to her request for period products for Texas students."