Boxes of Bank’s Salvaged Binders Donated to School : San Fernando: Resident buys supplies from a closed data center and gets a chance to help out students.

Rob Newbill wanted to help schools out of a bind.

So he dropped off a heap of three-ring binders at San Fernando Elementary School on Friday, thousands of them that made a pile 40 feet long, 4 feet high and 4 feet deep.

In a scene reminiscent of a stampede in a toy store, each of the school’s 1,100 students got to pick out one binder. Beginning at 8:30 a.m. with teacher Madeline Johnson’s third graders, one class at a time was allowed to pick through the pile for about five minutes.

“Wow, check it out,” said one boy, shaking open a box of binders.

“Alfonso, these are cool,” shouted a boy, as he climbed the pile.

“You can’t take two,” said a chubby boy, pointing an accusatory finger.

“I’m saving it for Mrs. Johnson,” said the accused, who then picked up a third.

Newbill, who owns a salvage company, was trying to dispose of the binders for First Interstate Bank. The leftover binders were used by employees in the bank’s data processing center in downtown Los Angeles, which was shut down last year.

“We have a multitude of supplies left over from when we laid people off. . . . We had this huge cage filled with supplies,” said Carol Crowe, vice president of facilities relocation for First Interstate Bank of California.

“I’ve been desperately trying to find schools or nonprofit groups who could take these things,” Crowe said. “It’s very irritating to throw things away.”

Newbill, 47, grew up in San Fernando and had agreed to buy some other office supplies from the bank when he noticed the roomful of binders and decided to help.

A friend of Newbill’s, Linda Jauron, then contacted the school, which happily agreed to take the free binders. Similar binders cost from $4 to $9 at drugstores near the school.

No one knows for sure how many binders there were in the pile, but after all the students received theirs, it had shrunk by less than half.

“No one ever counted,” said Newbill. “There must be 2,000 or 3,000.”

School officials, struggling to keep supplies stocked in the face of budget cuts, vowed to use every one of them. Principal Candida Fernandez said the school would use a donated binder to keep records on each student.

For the kids, most of whom come from working-class homes nearby, it meant more than saving a few bucks. It was fun.

“It’ll fit in my desk. I can put my math homework in there,” said third-grader Peter Cano, 8. “I can put my baseball cards in here too.”

“I’m glad it’s free so I don’t have to bug my mom to buy me one,” said classmate Mark Lomeli, 8. “But I really like it ‘cause it’s black and that’s my second-favorite color.”