Eat at Trolley Car Cafe and Diner this week, support Mount Airy teachers

Nicole Paulino needed a new stereo for her music class.

Paulino, 29, of Center City, has been teaching music to students from kindergarden through eighth grade at the C.W. Henry School in Mount Airy for the past eight years.

She improvised with computer speakers for her class until she could afford the $300 replacement stereo.

“I get zero funding,” says Paulino. Money earned from ticket sales of the yearly spring musical and other productions typically supplement her classroom expenses, Paulino says, but a $300 stereo surpassed Paulino’s ticket sales budget. So, Paulino applied for a grant from the Mount Airy Teacher’s Fund and received the full amount for the new stereo.

Trolley Car Diner and Cafe owner Ken Weinstein founded the Mount Airy Teachers’ Fund four years ago after volunteering at the Henry Houston School and hearing from parents and teachers about classroom-related expenses.

Now through Sunday, Aug. 14, 15-percent of all sales from the Trolley Car Diner in West Mount Airy and the Trolley Car Café in East Falls will be donated to the Mount Airy Teachers’ Fund.

Weinstein says he’s raised $28,000 for the Mount Airy Teacher’s Fund since its inception three years ago, and hopes to raise another $10,000 with the current fundraising effort.

“I would call them small victories,” says Weinstein. “We’re funding educational opportunities that teachers don’t have covered in their expenses.”

Weinstein says the funding has gone towards anything from a new rug for students to sit on during storytime, to admission on a class field trip.