School Support
Supplies
All schools face budget limitations and to ease that reality we support our staff with grants for supplies every year. Each teacher gets $200 for their classroom and the office receives $5000 for the teacher work room and office supplies. Every few years we support purchasing of classroom teaching equipment like furniture, electronic equipment, rugs, and other teaching aids. Lastly, due to the incredible generosity of our community fundraising, we are now able to fund all school supplies for each student - no more shopping for parents and teachers can set up their classrooms before school starts with the same supplies for everyone.
Staff Mini-Grants
Annual funding is set aside year year for our Family Advocate and Librarian, as they do not have significant individual budgets. Additionally, we have $10,000 set aside for our staff mini-grant program, which allows any staff member to apply for addition one time funding of a particular project or initiative. Past grants include support of the iExcel curriculum, specific supplies for new art and science lessons, an adaptive bike for our blended classrooms, a new projector for the Learning Lab, and faculty professional development.
Field Trips
Two to three times a year, every grade will bring learning to life by taking students off campus on field trips. These experiences are opportunities for hands-on activities and to experience local culture, nature, and community resources. Field trips give students the chance to discover new places, build curiosity, and create meaningful shared experiences with their classmates.
Playground Refresh
Our playground needs a refresh and it needs to be more inclusive for our blended program! We know this, the school knows this and the district knows this. The reality is that campus improvement projects have to be coordinated through the district and their priority process. With a larger organization structures and procedures, things do not move as quickly as we would like. This conversation is going on three years now and the PTA has raised a significant amount of money to supplement what we thought would be a full playground redo. It has become clear that a full redesign won’t be happening for a few years, so we are going to spend the $80,000 raised now to refresh parts of the playground areas.
We need to be real here, $80k does not go a long way with playground equipment and installation, but we can do a few smaller things. These improvements also have to go through the district and their equipment partners. Given the additional removal of some of our existing equipment by the district, we will be submitting a new plan outlining improvement priorities. We have met with the new Director of Maintenance and Facility Operations and see him as a willing partner. We also know this will take longer than we want, but we are going to make something happen! Updates on this project will come to you through the Orca Spout Out as we know more.