The Sunnyvale Education Foundation (SEF) issued $1,000 grants to each of the district’s schools this winter. The funds were raised from donors in the community. SEF invited each of the schools to submit their grant requests, which were established to support educational enrichment activities for SSD students. This year’s grants supported the following for each school:
- Fairwood/$1,000: STEM starter kits
- Ellis/$1,000: science camp scholarships
- Bishop/$1,000: CompassionIt kit tools and training
- Cherry Chase/$1,000: flexible seating
- Cumberland/$1,000: flexible seating
- San Miguel/$1,000 + $162.80: 1st grade Exploratorium field trip
- Vargas/$1,000: school garden
- Lakewood/$1,000: after-school advanced math program
- Columbia Middle/$1,000: Marine Science Institute invertebrate lab ($750) and choir risers ($250)
- Sunnyvale Middle/$1,000: Family reading project
According to SEF:
- These grants have impacted 2,850 students directly at every grade level in the district.
- Principals reported that 40 percent of these funds provide benefits that students are somewhat unlikely to otherwise receive. The other 60 percent were benefits that students were somewhat likely to receive.
- The most popular funding categories for the grants were STEM, whole-child wellness, and low-income enrichment.
In addition, Google donated 149 headsets to the foundation, which the board decided to divide between to the two middle schools. The headsets have already been distributed to the two schools and are valued at $7.15/unit, for a total of $1,065.35 of in-kind donations. The schools were very excited to receive them and have put them to good use.
SEF hopes to continue to support a wide variety of programs including STEM education, enrichment programs, parent education and much more to benefit Sunnyvale’s diverse school district. SEF was founded in June 2015, by local parents, school staff, and school board members, and is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity.
For more information about SEF or to make a donation, please visit: http://www.sunnyvaleeducationfoundation.org/
