In the Aftermath of Katrina

As we still reel from the events of the past two weeks, we must all continue our work in earnest. The strength of community schools is their ability to meet the unique challenges communities face by working collaboratively and across traditional boundaries. This is a strength that will be necessary in the coming months and years.

We have been hearing from some of our friends in the field that areas with community schools are working with and planning to help people recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. We believe that community schools are uniquely positioned to support these children and families.

It is in this context that we would like to hear from any of you whose community schools are involved in helping these students and families to rebuild their lives. Please send a brief note to ccs@iel.org and let us know what is happening.

Marty Blank
Amy Berg
Meagan Lindsay
Deborah Plavin

District, school and community leadership are important pieces of building and sustaining a community school initiative. Entrepreneurial principals, forward thinking district and local officials, community leaders, parents and families, and advocates across the country are working together to build a sustainable infrastructure for community schools.

Leaders at the school level often integrate resources at the school site because they see value in reaching out to the community and forming partnerships to help them support their student and families. They see the school as a resource to the community and involve students in learning in the community. In many cases, leaders at the district and community level are building community school initiatives with support and encouragement from their principals.

A community school initiative that has support at the local level is also able to redirect local assets to the school where they can be more effectively used and provide support for a community school coordinator. The coordinator works with the principal to form partnerships, engage the community and create a sustainable environment for the work.

School leaders at all levels must keep in mind that to sustain a community school initiative, what matters is “funding the vision not the program”. Along these same lines, it is also important, when discussing funding, to keep in mind that multiple funding sources are important for sustainability.

That said, in this edition of our newsletter, we look at funding – where to find it, how to get it, and how to use it most effectively. Read about the way one principal works to conquer the funding challenge, how one community is tapping a wide range of grants and community resources to supports its vision, and how another community found an unusual funding source that helped it to leverage other private assets.

Also find tools and opportunities to help secure funding for your own community school initiative.

First Person Feature
Sue McGuire, principal of Mount Anthony Union High School in Barrington, Vermont, talks about finding funding for her school without district support.

Cathy Gray, the assistant superintendent in the Evansville-Vanderburgh school district, explains how the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation has used many different funding sources to build and sustain their work.

Cathy Petsch, of Lincoln, NE, discusses how the school district in Lincoln has been able to sustain community schools work.

Resources
Links to funding resources.

Funding Opportunities
A sampling of funding opportunities from www.grantsalert.com

Events
What’s going on in the world of community schools?

Building support from the ground up
Sue McGuire, principal of Mount Anthony Union High School in Barrington, Vermont, is no stranger to the struggle of securing resources and funding. So how has Sue addressed this battle against the ever present need for money?

“You must have a vision for what you want your school to look like and build a good reputation” she explained. “Then, start small and begin to build that vision. Learn where funding is available and be open to many different avenues.”

“It is not uncommon for me to get a call from a local business, state program, or federal grant office, asking me if there is anything in my school to which they can donate money,” Sue explained. “People want to give money to a place that is doing good things with kids.”

Sue suggests getting connected to someone who knows about funding at both the state and federal level, preferably a grant writer. She has worked with the same writer since 1997 and he has been able to guide her to the grants which are most valuable for Mt. Anthony, and the ones which they have the best chances of being awarded. Sue can also go to him with specific projects or ideas which require funding and he is often able to find a grant which fits that particular need. Sue puts together most of the grants herself, however, since many of them are very similar and require the same information.

But grants are far from the only way to secure money. Mt. Anthony is also a licensed child care facility. The school is therefore able to offer services financed through the Child Care Development Fund and other state child care funding streams. While it took a lot of work upfront to meet all of the requirements to become licensed, and is now labor intensive, it has been a wonderful investment, bringing in a subsidy of $50,000 a year. Sue also will not hesitate to look for Title I, IDEA or Medicaid money that may be available.

“It takes some creativity,” she says. “The local offices might never think about using money for some of these things. But they have come to trust us. They know we think outside the box and do great things for students. It takes time to build that kind of reputation, but once you do, it becomes much easier to conquer the funding challenge.”

Sue Maguire is the former principal at Molly Stark Elementary and co-author with Joy Dryfoos of Inside Full-service Community Schools.

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Financing Supports Local Vision and Leadership
With strong leadership from Assistant Superintendent Cathy Gray and Superintendent Bart McCandless, the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation (EVSC) in Evansville Indiana has built a strong School Community Council (SCC) to support and find resources for their full service community schools. Evansville demonstrates what can happen when money from many different sources supports a common vision of how school and community can work together.

Cathy Gray shared recent developments in financing community schools with the Coalition. “We are using federal sources such as a 21st Century Community Learning Center grant, Title I, Title IV and Title V.  The District wrote a Safe School Healthy Students Grant and we have just heard that we were successful.”

“In addition to this federal money, we also have funding from a Coordinated School Health Grant from the Indiana Department of Education.  We are one of eight corporations in the state participating in this grant.  Our state has also found a little bit of money to support a transition to school program. We have actually started up a sub committee of the school community council to support early childhood.  We are trying to break cycles earlier.”

This federal and state funding is complimented by local resources such as The Wellborn Baptist Foundation, which has allocated almost $1 million dollars to date to the School Community Council (SCC) to support its infrastructure.

According to Gray, “The United Way recently gave one of our partner agencies $100,000 to fund social workers in the schools. Smoke Free Indiana has given us approximately $100,000 to support programs in our schools and the local Teachers Federal Credit Union recently donated $10,000 to the SCC to support families.” 

“The other resources we have garnered are not in dollars and cents,” says Gray. “St. Mary's Hospital has hired two staff members that work with the SCC, and the local Health Department has given us one nurse practitioner.  Recently St. Mary's Hospital has offered to donate a mobile health clinic to the SCC. The SCC, which is not a non-profit organization, is still looking at the feasibility of accepting that donation.”

To learn more about the Evansville School Community Council: http://www.evsc.k12.in.us/schoolzone/schcomm/schcomm.htm

To read the Coalition newsletter about Evansville: http://www.communityschools.org/newsletter/newsletterv.3.5.html

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Unique Funding Sources in Lincoln
Lincoln, Nebraska has a district-wide comprehensive Community Learning Centers (community schools) initiative. Led by a multi-sector Community Leadership Council, it was initiated through the work of the Lincoln Public School Foundation and expanded with 21 st Century Community Learning Centers funds. Co-Director Cathy Petsch says of their funding strategy, “probably our most unique funding source is through the Nebraska Investment Finance Authority (NIFA), which is actually a quasi-governmental organization that is state tax exempt but does not receive state tax dollars.”

“NIFA’s original interest in CLCs grew from their concern about the relationship between housing and student and family mobility. Now they have invested money in CLCs, which they have generated from their work. They are providing a match for the salaries of site supervisors of up to $35K per year, with a five year commitment. This year the match generated $108,000 from the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce, Gallup Organization, 6 banks, the realtors association, State Farm Insurance, and three foundations (JC Seacrest Trust, Woods Brothers Realty and W.K. Kellogg). ”

As I have said money brings money...and just as an aside...our next community-wide summit is around housing in our CLC neighborhoods. We hope to sustain NIFA’s interest and move towards doing some rehab work in local neighborhoods in response to needs identified by our School Neighborhood Advisory Councils,” says Petsch.

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Sustainability Planning
Capturing Cash for Kids: A Workbook for Reinvesting in Community Based Prevention Approaches for Children and Families. This workbook provides users with methods for tracking savings that are directly attributable to money spent on family support initiatives.
http://www.foundationconsortium.org/how/library/pdf/ccfk.pdf

Destination Sustainability: A Guide to Funding Community School Partnerships.
This guide provides a variety of tools to assist with implementation strategies, and to identify available funding opportunities. http://hsfo.ucdavis.edu/clearinghouse/catalog/item.lasso?-Token.catnum=1004

Sustainability Planning workbook from the Finance Project.
The workbook is organized into five modules that guide users through a step-by-step process of developing a written sustainability plan:
http://www.financeproject.org/engage/workbook.asp

Show Me the Money: Tips & Resources for Successful Grant Writing
Many educators have found that outside funding, in the form of grants, allows them to provide their students with educational experiences and materials their own districts can't afford. Learn how they get those grants -- and how you can get one too. Included: Practical tips to help first-time grant writers get the grants they need. http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/profdev/profdev039.shtml

Information on Grants for School Health Programs & Services
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/funding/index.htm

Grant Writing Tips
SchoolGrants has compiled an excellent set of grant writing tips for those that need help in developing grant proposals.
http://www.schoolgrants.org/tips.htm

School Grants
A collection of resources and tips to help K-12 educators apply for and obtain special grants for a variety of projects.
http://www.schoolgrants.org

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Department of Education Forecast of Funding
This document lists virtually all programs and competitions under which the Department of Education has invited or expects to invite applications for new awards for FY 2005 and provides actual or estimated deadline dates for the transmittal of applications under these programs. The lists are in the form of charts -- organized according to the Department's principal program offices -- and includes previously announced programs and competitions, as well as those planned for announcement at a later date.

Note: This document is advisory only and is not an official application notice of the Department of Education. They expect to provide regular updates to this document.
http://www.ed.gov/fund/grant/find/edlite-forecast.html

After School Grants
For a review of federal, state and local funding sources that can support after school activities go to: http://www.afterschoolalliance.org/funding_main.cfm

GrantsAlert
GrantsAlert is a website that helps nonprofits, especially those involved in education, secure the funds they need to continue their important work.
http://www.grantsalert.com/

Here is a sampling of what you will find at www.grantsalert.com:

Exxon Mobil’s Community Investment Initiative
Exxon Mobil Corporation has announced a new community investment initiative, Educating Women and Girls, a multi-year initiative which will fund numerous education projects for women and girls in the developing world in such places as Angola, Chad, Kazakhstan, Qatar and Indonesia. "The research is clear that improvements in education and increased opportunities for women and girls serve as a foundation for economic growth, development and societal progress. We believe this initiative will support international development goals and have a profound and lasting impact on individuals, their families and the communities where we operate around the world," said Rex Tillerson, President, Exxon Mobil Corporation. World Bank studies confirm that, when all of the benefits are taken into account, programs directed to educating women and girls yield a higher rate of return than any other community investment available in the developing world.
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050707005089&newsLang=en

Mini-Grant Program for Service-Learning
Constitutional Rights Foundation's Robinson Mini-Grant Program for service-learning projects designed to address serious community issues. Maximum Award: $500. Eligibility: K-12. Deadline: October 14, 2005.
http://www.crf-usa.org/network/crf_robin.html

Captain Planet Foundation
The Captain Planet Foundation funds hands-on environmental projects to encourage youth around the world to work individually and collectively to solve environmental problems in their neighborhoods and communities. Maximum Award: $2500. Eligibility: Schools and non-profits. Deadlines: June 30, September 30, and December 31.
http://www.captainplanetfdn.org/aboutUs.html#policies_grant_guidelines

NASA Spacelink Urban and Rural Community Enrichment Program for Grades 5-8
NASA specialists train core educators as a team to conduct interdisciplinary aerospace activities in school districts. Major activities include lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on classroom activities that supplement the ongoing curriculum. Eligibility: Teachers of middle school students from rural and urban communities. Deadline: N/A.
http://aesp.nasa.okstate.edu/URCEP/index.html

Hasbro Programs for Children Grants
Hasbro Children Foundation grants to support the development and/or expansion of programs for children. Maximum Award: $500-$35,000. Eligibility: Programs must provide direct services to children under age 13. They must serve children and families who are economically disadvantaged. They must be innovative and provide a model from which others can learn. Deadline: N/A.
http://www.hasbro.org

Surdna Foundation Arts Teachers Fellowship Program
The Surdna Foundation Arts Teachers Fellowship Program supports the artistic revitalization of outstanding arts teachers in specialized, public arts high schools. Maximum Award: $5000. Eligibility: Permanently assigned full- and part-time arts faculty in specialized, public arts high schools. Deadline: November 18, 2005
http://www.surdna.org/programs/artsteachersfellowships.html

The Melody Program of the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation
The Melody program is designed to provide musical instruments and instrument repairs to existing K-12 school music programs that have no other source of financing to purchase additional musical instruments and materials. Eligibility: schools that meet the requirements outlined on the website. Maximum Award: $500-$5,000. Deadline: N/A.
http://www.mhopus.org/apply.htm

Prudential Foundation Ready to Learn Program
Prudential Foundation Ready to Learn Program for education reform efforts that strengthen public education at the elementary school level: systemic school reform; improving the quality of teachers, principals and other school leaders, and arts education; early childhood care and education initiatives, and strategies to improve literacy that address professional development for teachers, family literacy programs or literacy in the early years. Maximum Award: $25,000-$1 million. Eligibility: Public education at the elementary school level. Deadline: N/A. http://www.prudential.com/productsAndServices/0,1474,intPageID%253D1444%2526blnPrinterFriendly%253D0,00.html

Labels for Education
Campbells, Inc. Labels for Education Program gives schools free educational equipment in exchange for labels from Campbell products. Maximum Award: N/A. Eligibility: Schools or parents coordinate label drives to raise resources for schools. Deadline: N/A.
http://www.labelsforeducation.com/about_lfe.asp

Humane and Environmental Education
The National Association for Humane and Environmental Education KIND Award recognizes an outstanding teacher who consistently incorporates humane and environmental education into his or her curriculum. Maximum Award: various. Eligibility: Teachers K-6. Deadline: February 15, 2006.
http://www.nahee.org/awards/default.asp

Allen Foundation
The Allen Foundation supports educational nutrition programs, with priority given to training programs for children and young adults to improve their health and development. Maximum Award: Past grants have ranged from $2,000 to $1 million. Eligibility: Schools and school districts should partner with local nonprofits to form nutrition education programs. Deadline: Ongoing. http://www.allenfoundation.org/

Intel Model School
The Intel Model School Program provides equipment for a school or district to enhance their technology by using advanced technology. The Intel Model School Program identifies schools that desire equipment or have a unique project to complete by using Intel products, and can show the improvement in the quality of the education experience for both the teacher and the student by using high-end technology. Award: Seeding of Intel equipment. Eligibility: K-12 schools or school districts. Deadline: Ongoing.
http://www.intel.com/modelschool

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The National FAST Parents Leadership Conference
The National FAST Parents Leadership Conference marks the time of the year when FAST parents and the FAST community comes together to reflect on past successes, learn new strategies, and network with a variety of people – including parents, FAST team members, administrators, and the FAST program founder – who are interested in supporting parents as the primary prevention agent in their child’s life.

Conference Goals are to:

• Provide support and education for the development, implementation, and continuation of FASTWORKS throughout the United States and abroad;
• Offer opportunities for parents to share thoughts and ideas on how their local FASTWORKS movements are progressing; and,
• Renew old friendships and develop new resources and contacts.

Search Institute's Healthy Communities, Healthy Youth Conference
November 3-5, 2005 at the InterContinental Hotel in Dallas, Texas

2005 Theme: The Asset-Building Get-Together: Creating Intergenerational Community
Designed for people who work with or care about youth, the Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth Conference brings together people of different backgrounds, nationally and internationally, who share a common goal: to work together to create healthy schools, communities, and organizations for children and youth through asset-building. This year's theme, Creating Intergenerational Community, will showcase ways youth and adults are building bridges across generations and across differences to create healthy communities. Join us as we celebrate our hard work and efforts in creating a social movement for a world where all young people are valued and thrive.

Early-Bird Registration through September 16
($525 for adults; $365 for youth-up to age 23, $365 for seniors-age 65 and older)
After September 16:
($575 adults, $415 youth, and $415 seniors)
For more information or to download a complete conference brochure, go to http://www.search-institute.org/hchy.

National Summit on Your Cities Families in San Antonio
Local elected officials and other community leaders now have the opportunity to participate in one of the National League of Cities' most successful and exciting events —  the 2005 National Summit on Your City’s Families. This National Summit will be held September 25 - 28, 2005, at the Westin Riverwalk Hotel in San Antonio, Tex. This Summit is the nation’s largest gathering of municipal leaders who are working to improve the lives of children, youth, and families in their communities.

For more information, go to http://www.nlc.org/iyef/your_city_s_families_conference/862.cfm or contact Sharie Wood at 202-626-3087 or iyef@nlc.org.

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Additional Information
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Coalition for Community Schools c/o Institute for Educational Leadership * 4455 Connecticut Avenue, NW Ste 310 * Washington, DC 20008