Foundation hands out early gifts to schools

Published: December 22, 2003

By Ted Taylor

The Bend Bulletin

The Bend-La Pine School District's education foundation handed out a few early Christmas presents to local schools this month — money for new musical instruments, a science lab, books on tape and more.

The nonprofit fund-raising organization awarded grants totaling $17,000 to 20 schools in the district. Every school that submitted at least one proposal received money.

Stephanie King, the band and choir teacher at Pilot Butte Middle School, said the $1,000 grant she applied for and received will help pay for about four new trumpets, flutes or clarinets and new cases for the instruments.

"One of the reasons I applied this year is because we had a number of students who couldn't afford to rent instruments by the month and wanted to check out instruments from us," she said. It costs about $20 per month to rent an instrument from a local music store, she said. It costs $40 per year to check one out from the school.

But there weren't enough instruments to check out to everyone, she said.

"It seems like a lot of money, but it doesn't go very far," she said, commenting on the price of the instruments. "But I'm thrilled to be getting it."

At Pine Ridge Elementary, Bend-La Pine's newest school, a $2,500 grant award will be used to bolster the school's reading room with books for kindergartners and first-graders.

The room houses multiple copies of books for children to choose from.

"We didn't have anything for our real emerging readers to take home so they could practice reading with their parents," said Principal John Vallerga. "We beefed up that portion of it."

Both Vallerga and King learned of the grant awards this week.

Along with the instruments at Pilot Butte and the literacy program at Pine Ridge, the grant money will pay for a broad range of educational initiatives including:

• Renovating the stage at Amity Creek Elementary School.

• Purchasing newspaper page layout software for the Bend High student newspaper.

• Purchasing math teaching tools at Juniper Elementary School.

• Purchasing musical instruments at High Desert Middle School.

Some of the grant money also will be used by teachers for staff development in teaching research skills and the arts to elementary students.

Middle school students will receive funds for music education, science laboratory equipment, and computers.

High school students throughout the district will benefit from support for several projects, including journalism classes and other programs.

The private, nonprofit foundation conducted its first impact grant program this fall and received grant proposals from teachers in almost every school.

At the same time, the foundation has been conducting an ongoing campaign to raise funds to support these and other educational projects.

"We're very pleased to be able to offer these Impact Grants to teachers and schools," said Mike Dugan, president of the Education Foundation. "Since our revival just a year ago, the foundation has been working to establish the impact grant program so that we could start to meet some of the immediate needs of the schools. We're pleased with our initial success, but hope to do more in the future."

The foundation received more than 55 grant proposals seeking a total of more than $100,000.

Each proposal was screened and reviewed by the respective school's site council to ensure that the proposal was consistent with the school's educational objectives.

The foundation continues to seek additional sources of funding or sponsors for specific projects.

Individuals or organizations interested in sponsoring a project are encouraged to contact the Education Foundation for the Bend-La Pine School District at 541-322-5493 for more information.

Projects still in need of funding will be displayed on the foundation's Web site, www.educationfoundation.us, in the near future. Donations through payroll deduction are available.

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