Center Education Foundation

The primary goal of the Center Education Foundation is to provide resources that enable teachers to maximize the positive impact that they have on student learning, helping students prepare to be successful in post-secondary education and, ultimately, in well-paying, high demand careers.

The goal is to help teachers overcome the resource gap between funds from public sources and the need for rich and high impact learning experiences.

In addition, our goal is to provide resources and work with community organizations that address the social and emotional needs of students to help them be ready to learn when they are at school. This can include helping to address issues of persistent poverty, housing instability, and family and community dynamics that impact student mental health.

When the Center Education Foundation was created in 1999, we quickly realized that the single best way to impact student learning in the Center School District was to support the work of classroom teachers. Our primary strategy since that time has been to provide funds through a competitive grant program that teachers can request to enhance student learning opportunities.

As the Foundation has grown, our ability to help teachers has also improved. We currently award over $50,000 per year with 40-50 grants covering a wide range of academic areas. The ages served by grants range from birth to high school seniors. Academic areas addressed including technology, art, science, math, social studies, literacy, school libraries, physical education, travel experiences, music, behavior, and safety net supports.

All grant recipients are required to provide feedback to the Foundation on how the funds were expended and how the program impacted student learning.

The Foundation consists of a volunteer board of alumni and community leaders who raise funds and administer the grant program. An Executive Director provides the day to day support for the Foundation's activities. Funds are raised through a variety of community sources, including corporate partners, alumni, individual donors, and Center staff who donate through a payroll deduction program.

The grant review process is conducted by a volunteer group of educators who do an initial screening of requests and make recommendations to the Foundation Board. The Board makes the final funding decisions. Funds are given to the School District to be disbursed to support the teachers per normal district financial procedures.

Over the past three years, we have awarded over $170,000 in classroom grants to Center teachers.

As we move forward, we expect to continue to expand our impact by developing new sources of revenue so that we can approve more of the grant requests that are submitted.

In addition, we are expanding our mission to work with a community-based program called Impact Center to address some of the outside needs of our students and their families. The immediate goal of Impact Center is to end homelessness for Center students by providing a wide variety of support resources to help homeless families get into and stay in dignified, permanent housing. Longer term, we expect this group to also address the larger problem of housing instability for our families.