Across Williamson County, NOOK Aims to Meet Student Needs

Almost every day, Allison Gamble gets a similar text.

“Hello, can I please get the following items delivered?” a school social worker asked her at the beginning of the 2025-26 school year. Listed items included clothes, underwear, shoes and diapers for a 7-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy.

“Plus, gas card and snacks if available. The family currently resides in a hotel, so please nothing that requires a fridge, oven, etc.” the social worker added.

Gamble is co-head of the Community Development and Fundraising Committee at Needs of Our Kids (NOOK), an organization that helps staff in Franklin Special School District (FSSD) and Williamson County Schools (WCS) meet students’ basic needs during the school day. Between the two districts, NOOK serves more than 45,000 students at 26 preschools, 35 elementary schools, 14 middle schools and 11 high schools across the county.

The completely volunteer-run organization fields requests every day from teachers, social workers, psychologists and administrators regarding what needs a student may have. NOOK has a volunteer on call every day of the school year tasked with either finding supplies in NOOK’s inventory or shopping to get the appropriate items for each request. By the end of the school day, the supplies will be waiting at the school for the student.

“We are designed to help school staff respond immediately to any child’s needs every day of the school year, to bridge the gap to stay in school,” Gamble says. “[We can] get them food, clothing, school supplies, hygiene products, anything you can imagine that will get them over that hump.”

The group’s mission is simple: to provide students with what they need to safely and comfortably learn. Gamble says that ensuring students’ basic needs of food, hygiene, clothing and health are met is essential to keeping kids in school.

“If you don’t have these things, you’re either more likely to not feel comfortable in school, or you just can’t go because you have nothing clean to put on, or if you’re hungry or if your parent has lost their job and they get one and they need gas money to take care of that, well that also deals with transportation and keeping kids in school,” Gamble says.

Founded in 2017, NOOK has donated $196,000 in clothing, hygiene essentials and gas cards, and distributed $33,000 in postsecondary scholarships. Working with community partners, the group has also donated 9,000 pounds of food via One Generation Away, and 100 pairs of glasses through OneSight. NOOK also provides feminine hygiene products to every school in Williamson County.

Today, NOOK has an annual operating budget of $65,000 funded via in-kind and monetary donations. 99 percent of donations are spent directly on school and student needs, with services like accounting donated by volunteers.

Many might be surprised to hear that students in Williamson County, Tennessee’s wealthiest county, need this level of support. But as of 2020, roughly 40 percent of students in FSSD qualified for free or reduced-price school lunches, and as of 2023, 7.6 percent of children in the county were in households living below the federal poverty line.

Gamble said that it is a misconception that all students in Williamson County have their basic needs met.

“It equates to about 4,000 people in Franklin proper that are living in poverty, so the need objectively exists,” Gamble says. “Every community has families in crisis.”

Many families in crisis are currently dealing with mounting financial issues due to massive slashes to federal benefit programs. The most recent federal budget cut funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), its partner program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and Medicaid. As a result of these cuts, it’s projected that Tennesseans could lose 20 percent of their SNAP benefits and 68,000 residents may lose healthcare coverage.

Gamble says these cuts may increase the local community’s reliance on NOOK to meet students’ basic needs.

Even in an uncertain environment, NOOK is looking toward the future. The group is one of the first beneficiaries of the Circle of Giving, an organization directing proceeds of The Factory at Franklin’s new Carousel of Dreams to local nonprofits. Along with its partnerships with local sports teams, businesses and organizations, NOOK hopes that the Circle of Giving will only grow its ability to serve the community. Gamble stressed that every donation, whether monetary or in-kind, helps the organization further its mission of helping students.

“In little and big ways, it’s about just keeping them in their seat at school."