A non-Jewish math teacher arrived at the end of the year party at YULA Boys High School in Los Angeles and discovered an amazing surprise. The students from the Orthodox school bought him a new car worth $30,000 after they found out that he walks for hours every day to teach them
Math teacher Julio Castro lives in the Santa Clarita Valley in Los Angeles and he travels about four hours a day by electric scooter and bus to get to the YULA Orthodox school because he doesn’t have a car. He usually wakes up at 4:30 in the morning and comes home late at 9:30 p.m., when his three young children are already asleep.
The Los Angeles Times publishes that the journey starts from his apartment, from there he travels about ten kilometers to the metro station on an electric scooter, from there, bus 797 which takes him about 90 minutes to reach Century City. Then about a kilometer to the Orthodox Jewish campus on Pico Boulevard in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood.
Despite the long commute every day, “he still makes sure to dedicate all that time to the students,” said Yehoshua Grandesh, who happened to see his teacher frantically looking for cars online, hoping to find something he could drive for about $1,500. “He will give up his lunch break to help a student and stay after school. He also helps students who are not in his classes. He is really, really dedicated to our future.”
@yulaboys math teacher Julio Castro was waking up at 4am and returning home after 930pm to teach in YULA. He had to take a bus and a scooter to work.
So the students raised $30,000 and bought their math teacher a @MazdaUSA 3 Hatchback.
Incredible! pic.twitter.com/oOp7i8Jj0d— Mordechai Burg (@RavBurg) August 27, 2022
During a months-long fundraising campaign, the students took to social media with their parents, and raised $30,000 for a car and one year of insurance and gas donated to thank a teacher who goes many miles every day for them, they bought him a 2019 Mazda.
The hundreds of students stood together with the teachers and the educational staff outside the school, where they gave him the car as a gift to the applause of the crowd that hugged the teacher, local media and outside of Los Angeles published the exciting story that caused the great sanctification of the Hashem.
Rabbi Aryeh Sofrin, the school’s principal, said the effort “is really about gratitude. It’s about our students appreciating the sacrifices that our teachers and Mr. Castro, in particular, make to ensure they can maximize their potential and be the best version of themselves.”