Local
foundations aid schools
Interest in process growing.
Belvidere, White Twp. hope to set up own fundraising
organizations.
Monday, March 06, 206 • By Sara Leitch •
The Express-Times
Parents and school officials in Belvidere
and White Township say the process of budgeting for the next
school year has been a reality check.
"The kids have lost most of their field
trips this year, most if not all of the co-curricular
activities have been cut," White Township resident Sandra
Simone said. "We are down to our bare bones."
Simone, a mother of three, is
spearheading the effort to create an educational foundation
for White Township's school to raise money to pay for items
that budget caps and cost increases have forced the school
board to drop.
Interest in educational foundations often
increases in tough economic times, said Richard Vespucci, a
state Department of Education spokesman.
"They really came on the scene around
1990," Vespucci said. "That was also a very tight fiscal
time for schools, and schools were looking for creative ways
to fund different kinds of projects."
Typically, educational foundations are
nonprofit corporations that raise money though community
fundraisers and other efforts. Then they parcel the money
out to teachers and school administrators to pay for special
projects and programs that aren't in the budget.
"You wouldn't fund elementary school
teachers through a foundation, because the source of funding
might not be reliable from year to year," said Michael
Yaple, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards
Association. "Typically, what foundations fund would be
amenities or extras that the school would like to have but
might not otherwise be able to afford."
White Township's effort is still in its
early stages, Simone said. She's still looking for
volunteers, especially those who can help set up a nonprofit
corporation to collect the funds. White Township's chief
school administrator appreciates the effort.
"I think we need to explore it," Chief
Administrator Linda Heilman said. "With our budget, we're
not able to fund some of the extras that we used to
fund."
In neighboring Belvidere, Superintendent
Jean Atkins Gool has been working for about a year to
organize a foundation to raise money for her three schools.
School officials are looking for residents willing to serve
on a committee that will have its first meeting March
14.
"It's no secret we are money-challenged,"
Gool said. "Finding another money stream other than the
taxpayer would be very beneficial to us all."
Residents of both Belvidere and White
Township said they're following the example of nearby
Knowlton Township, where the decade-old Knowlton Knowledge
foundation raises about $25,000 a year.
Knowlton Knowledge arranges gift
certificates with local ice cream parlors for any student on
the school's honor roll, foundation president Beth Daly
said. It also pays for a program called Project Read to help
struggling students and provide educational
handouts.
In past years, Knowlton Knowledge has
funded an after-school science club, a laser jet printer,
and an open house night at school. In addition to grants,
the foundation has a "slush fund" that teachers can dip into
for classroom supplies.
It can be hard to get people involved in
running the foundation, Daly said. Volunteers try to educate
parents on what the foundation pays for, and how much it
depends on volunteers.
"Every volunteer could be another
resource," Daly said. "There are a lot of people out there
with resources, we're still trying to figure out how to
reach into them and get it out of them."
In eastern Warren County, the
Hackettstown Foundation for Educational Excellence has been
around since 1992 and has poured more than $122,000 into the
school system, President Tom Keating said.
"We've used it for things as creative as
a butterfly garden for the grammar school, to a star lab
that's actually shared by the rest of the county," Keating
said.
Reporter Sara Leitch can be reached at 908-475-8044 or by
e-mail at sleitch@express-times.com.
© 2006 The Express-Times. Used with
permission.
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