The 2nd-grade pupils at Mechanics Grove Elementary School in Mundelein learned about oceans last winter by walking through a coral reef in the school hallway.
Their mini-oceanarium was constructed by a team of parents, teachers and pupils who stuffed and sewed cloth fish and painted backdrops.
They built the exhibit without using a penny of school district money. The Mundelein District 75 Education Foundation funded the project with a $250 teacher mini-grant.
In Naperville, 1st-grade pupils at Wheatland School made a pretend trip this spring into space. They wore spacesuits and climbed into a rocket ship, all made by parents; watched a video simulating blastoff; ate space food; and spent the day learning about the work of an astronaut.
Their trip was paid for by a $1,000 grant from the Indian Prairie (District 204) Educational Foundation.
“We couldn’t provide this type of elaborate experience with current funding,” Principal Janet Stevenson said. “It’s wonderful. Having a foundation allows us to support this kind of experience. We all know teachers spend a lot out of pocket, but you can’t expect them to spend $1,000 for something like this.”
Education foundations are non-profit, community-based organizations that raise money for public schools by soliciting corporate and private donations and holding fundraising events. In the last 10 years, their numbers have grown dramatically as communities seek ways to supplement shrinking school budgets.
There are 100 to 150 education foundations in Illinois, said Glen Gerard, vice president of Educational Foundation Consultants, a Williamston, Mich., company that helps districts set up foundations. Most of those in Illinois are in Chicago suburbs. Gerard has conferred with administrators from the Chicago public schools but knows of no foundations in Chicago.
The school foundation movement began in California after voters approved Proposition 13 in 1978. The legislation limited the amount of property-tax money communities could spend on schools.
The Batavia Foundation for Educational Excellence in District 101, begun in 1986, was one of the first foundations in the Chicago area.
“We pioneered the way,” said Rosalie Jones, one of the foundation’s original board members and now president of the Batavia District 101 School Board. Jones, who has acted as consultant for other districts starting foundations, still gets one or two calls a week from people looking for information.
“We formed the foundation to provide an avenue of resources and funding for educational programs that enhance and enrich the existing curriculum,” she said. “And our budgets are such-with tax caps and funding levels of the state-(that) we do well to provide the bare minimum. There were just a lot of things we knew we wanted to do and couldn’t.”
To get started, Batavia administrators contacted a consulting firm and did much of the research.
Foundations must file legal documents with the state to become registered. Then they must find committed people to be trustees. Board members frequently include school district personnel so that each group knows what the other is doing.
“Even though they are both separate legal entities, you don’t want the foundation to go charging off in a direction that’s not compatible with the strategic plan that the district has,” said Gene Swierczewski, one of the 1989 founders of the Lake Park High School District 108 Foundation in Roselle.
It also helps to have a diverse board, foundation veterans said. The more people that board members know, the more corporate doors can be opened for contributions and the more community involvement can be generated.
When the Mundelein foundation was begun six years ago, one of the largest home builders in Lake County was tapped for a contribution to get the group started. Since then, the foundation, like most in the Chicago area, has received about half its revenue from contributions and the other half from fundraising events, said Judy Fornero, a Mundelein foundation trustee. That group’s main fundraiser is an auction, which raised $6,000 this year.
Foundations, however, do more than garner money.
“We’re always looking for people who want to get involved, and we’ll meet them at their level, whether they want to donate something to the auction or they’re interested in teaching a class,” Fornero said.
For example, Mundelein resident Mai Jenke, who has two children at Mechanics Grove, helped organize the parents who built the oceanarium. She also found artists to design the canvas backdrops and helped the children paint them.
The project was started by the 2nd-grade teachers who had applied for a mini-grant.
“We thought it would be a great idea for the kids to create their own ocean,” says 2nd-grade teacher Jennifer Navarro. “They did most of the work themselves, and now they’re giving tours, taking small groups (of other children) through it (and) pointing out things in it that they’ve learned about.
“The foundation is a good resource for us, allowing us to go above and beyond what we’d normally do.”
Jenke’s latest foundation endeavor is establishing a hands-on fine arts museum for the district with a $2,000 grant she applied for and received. She is recruiting artists and performers for the museum, which will have activity centers where children can do art projects and learn about performing arts by acting out skits under the guidance of exerienced community-theater members. She hopes to open the museum in spring 1996.
“I heard they were looking for ideas for fine arts,” she said, “and I thought this would be an interesting thing to do.”
Jenke also taught a class in Saturday Scholars, a 10-week district-wide educational program for kindergarteners through 8th graders funded by the foundation. About 400 children participated last winter for a nominal fee, meeting at a district school on Saturdays. Most of the teachers, such as Jenke, were volunteers. Jenke, who has degrees in chemistry and physics, taught a class in electricity and magnetism.
“One thing that happens with foundations is you involve people from your community in partnership ways, in working with you, not just giving money,” Gerard said. “This is another vehicle for people and communities to participate in their schools.”
The arts often are targeted for foundation funding, Gerard said, because they are seen as extras that don’t get as much district money as academic subjects. Increasingly, technology is being funded by foundations, he added, because the needs in this area are so great and constantly require updating.
One of the latest projects of the Oak Lawn-Hometown School District 123 Educational Foundation is installing telephone lines and modems in its six school libraries and computer labs, allowing children to access the Internet. A $2,000 grant is funding the project, said Ursula Ehretsman, an administrative assistant for the district and the foundation. The foundation also has bought CD-ROM players for each school library.
“Anything the foundation can help out with, that’s less (tax) money the district has to use,” Ehretsman said. “We want to enhance the educational opportunities for our children. Some of the things, like the fine arts (performances attended by children) probably wouldn’t be done without the foundation.”
Having access to extra funding also allows teachers to be more creative, school administrators say.
Peggy Shanker, a 3rd-grade teacher at Covington School in Oak Lawn, said about 30 teachers a year will write grant proposals in the district, seeking up to $500 each to fund small classroom projects.
Shanker bought films for her Christmas Around the World Project with mini-grant money; another teacher bought copies of a novel for each pupil in her class for an English project.
Smaller foundations are lucky to reach goals of $10,000 a year, while larger, more successful ones can pull in more than $50,000 a year, educators say.
“I haven’t had a foundation fail,” Gerard said. “We’ve had some that had a huge burst of energy in the beginning and then (have) run out of energy and had to recharge itself (sometimes with new trustees). A foundation will get weak if it doesn’t have good, knowledgeable, skilled trustees.”
Foundations also need to be careful not to go to the same segment of a community over and over to ask for donations, some members said. Gerard, though, isn’t worried about funding drying up.
“The point at which a community gets saturated is when they say `This cause isn’t important to me,’ ” he says. “But when a legitimate cause is put forth, people in this country are outstanding in terms of charitable giving. If the cause has merit, people will continue to give.”
