30 Jul Removing Barriers Update 2019/2020
Removing Barriers for success and helping students thrive is a pillar of what the Foundation does. Your support makes it possible for students to receive individualized support that schools can not provide.
Helping disadvantaged students is important to the Foundation, our donors and supporters. With your help we completed our 16th year of Backpacks for Kids, continue to provide our homeless students with additional resources, and in the last couple years we have started the Opportunity fund, Basic Needs Aid fund, and begun helping to eliminate school lunch debt.
This year was exciting thanks to an initial anonymous donation and the support of the Woodinville Chamber of Commerce. Combined we were able to provide more than $43,000 in opportunity funds for all of our middle schools and high schools. We were able to provide budgets for schools to work from and began to streamline the process for student access to success. These funds are delivered by trained school staff members and have been used to cover basic needs like clothing or lunches, class fees, field trip fees, textbooks, ASB cards, or other necessary expenses that families struggled to afford for their students. Schools can easily record how and when funds are used during the year, making reporting simple and quick. Because funds are accessed directly, administrative time is greatly reduced, and privacy is respected.
When the coronavirus hit our Northshore community, the environment changed and the Foundation pivoted to address the needs of our community.
Immediately, the Community & District Response Fund was deployed, and our community responded by providing over $24,000 of support. This support provided 80 weeks of subsidized childcare for students. Funds raised through this portal are overseen by a committee composed of both District and Foundation representatives. Funding used is then reported back to donors for full transparency.
As the pandemic grew, many parents lost their jobs and struggled to feed their families. By acknowledging COVID-19 as a crisis, all families became eligible for Basic Needs Aid. Providing families with $200 in grocery gift cards, we help ease the stress families were facing by giving over 700 grocery gift cards by the end of the school year. This was made possible by the generosity of NSEA, our educators, and many donors,
Once learning from home started, the lack of school supplies at home became evident. Within days the Foundation activated our Backpacks for Kids school supply resources. This allowed us to create and deliver school supply kits to more than 170 families.
As a longer-term solution to COVID-19 changes, and the decision to start the school year remotely, we’re making a formal reallocation of Backpacks for Kids to provide school supply kits for at-home use by students. Our traditional supply drive has been replaced with a fundraising campaign to help meet those needs. Also given the current climate, the school supply kits will be available through May of 2021 to make sure that students have what they need throughout the 20/21 school year to be successful in their studies.
Amidst all of this, our homeless students still need us, and we continue providing funding to help stabilize their situation and find permanent solutions. In 20/21 the Foundation is committing to provide more staff time to identify our homeless students. With the generosity of Chick-fil-A Bothell, we will be able to offer short stays at a local hotel for families in need between housing.
School Lunch: At the end of the 19/20 school year, with in-person classes only running until March, nearly $57,000 of debt was accumulated. Donors including Community Church of Seattle, Indo-American Friendship Forum Foundation, and dozens of other supporters generously covered meals for 7714 student meals, a total of $27,000.
Now, thanks to new federal policies, no student can be denied school lunch regardless of the ability to pay. This is a meaningful shift for students and families and helps us get a clear look at how many students need help beyond the free and reduced lunch assistance program.
In closing, it has been a difficult year globally, and yet an amazing year of local community helping each other during these unprecedented times. Your support made it possible for us to be ready to address emergent issues in real-time. We appreciate your support and your investment, knowing that we will always be ready for what comes next.
