Up Close with Cathy Unruh; Hillsborough Education Foundation

This special presentation was produced in high definition by W. edu Tampa St. Petersburg Sarasota. It's a back to school for students in West Central Florida in a year when state budget cuts have slashed funding for public education. But there's another source of funding that you may not know about. Education Foundation. They help teachers and students by offering resources and support including not just money but education essential as basic as pencils and books. Learn more about these private efforts for public schools. Coming up next. These are challenging times for Florida schools. The state faces an estimated six billion dollar deficit and deep budget cuts are coming out of education. Schools face reduced staffing and dwindling resources. Now more than ever privately funded education foundations are pitching in to try and plug the

gaps. These foundations exist around west central Florida and today we visit with the Hillsborough County Education Foundation to learn more. Bill Hoffman is the president of Aylesbury Education Foundation welcome bell. Thank you. These foundations have largely been around for some time now can you tell us how they got started. They have actually when Governor Martinez was in Tallahassee the certification foundations in Florida so Hillsborough have been around for a little over 20 years. All of them somewhere in the 18 to 23 year old range. And it was really a recognition of the fact that the private community wanted to invest in public education. And one some way to do that and so they set up a series of 5 0 1 C 3s nonprofits where anybody who wants to do something it could be as you say it could be funding it could be resources could be expertise that they have a way of doing that. And what is the primary mission of the foundation. We see our role as making the connection between the community

and anybody who wants to be supporting students teachers schools and those in the school district and those entities. It could be any number of a variety of different forms. But if it's something where the public wants to get involved they want to try to to help. Schools have often had business partners that had PTSD have had small fundraisers but on a larger scale you have organizations that they see the value of public education they realize that their employees are coming from the schools. They realize that their employees children are going to these schools and they want to support them long times they want to support him on a big scale. I mean they you know district wide would like to help with literacy programs or with scholarships and they'll do that through the education foundations. You think this has 1988 and elsewhere and raise 55 million dollars since right now it's a loser 60 million and that's a good point. We have foundation in our name but we're not what people traditionally think of as foundations we have a big endowment and your job is giving away money. Our job is to bring in the

resources and the money and then ninety five plus percent of it goes back out into the schools each year. So you mentioned of course corporations who are realizing that they need to help schools. But besides that how is your money raised. We have you know if you look at the pile of who gives to public education businesses are a big part of that pie probably more so than most charities where it's primarily individuals. But we have a lot of individuals who give a lot of small donors. We have private foundations who have as part of their mission to support public education and they do that through us we have the ability to since you know we can interface with the community businesses private foundations and the school district with the ability to make the best connection a lot of times people want to get involved or that or they have some resources or they want to give. And I'm not quite sure the best way to do it maybe maybe they want to do a scholarship. And you know to reach 200 20 schools 24 high schools it's

pretty challenging. And since we're out there constantly doing that we have the ability to do it. And then you have some fund raisers that you do and we do. We were always scrambling out there trying to bring in some more resources. We have a great golf tournament that we have a bunch of people mainly the ones who are working with the school district to participate in and bats and cook is our title sponsor and they've just done a wonderful job of helping us. We have coming up actually being a September tools for schools breakfast where we're going out and asking individuals to to be inspired to help support our teaching tools program. We have a group McLean that does a fishing tournament for us and we're going to be doing something in November that's really very unique it's called skyscraper caper and it's going to involve rappelling off of one of the buildings downtown. And you have stuff about us. We do. We do. Going right now. Any organization business civic group church any organization that would like

to help by providing supplies to students. Right now we've got stuff the bus going and contact the foundation we can get you all in school toolkit where we've identified the basic supplies that many of our students need. We've got a huge district is the eighth largest district in the nation and one hundred ninety thousand plus students and the interesting thing is over half of them are what's considered free and reduced lunch which in the education community that's a measurement of how poor the students are. And you've got families who get that supply list at the beginning of the year and it's tough for them to be able to to buy everything that they need for all the students. And then when we look at the cuts to the school district and health by county alone it's been 82 million dollars over the past two years. And for your district it will be down about seventy two point five million this year. What classes and programs do you see being hit the hardest by these ongoing cuts.

Well the school board and superintendent have been very strong about looking at the basic programs and holding them harmless. They have been doing I think a good job of really focusing on student achievement which which is the key but it's some of those extra things it's supplies for art class it's the field trips. It's some of the extra things that teachers may be going out of their pocket for that there's not going to be as much funding available. Tallahassee in fact interesting thing about school funding that I've been learning I'm not an educator by background is that Tallahassee they put strings on most of the funding that comes through it is for books or it is for busing or it's for food or it's for the supplies and the classroom supplies they cut this year as part of their their cuts so. Hillsborough district all districts are getting less than previous years. You just said that teachers defended their own pockets and that's something that I think a lot of people don't

realize that teachers use their own money to go out and buy some of these essential education materials that they're not able to through anything else and some teachers are hard pressed to afford those essential as themselves so to help address this issue and get students the materials they need you have the teaching tools are what is teaching tools how does it work. Some tools a real neat program that has been in existence in the community for about six years now it's been part of the Foundation for the last three and it recognizes the fact that teachers will go out it's time to set up their classroom and they want to put things on the walls and they want to get maybe some books for their classroom library. And they go into their own pocket because they're allocated funds from Tallahassee through the school district. But it's really enough for them to do what they want to do. And then on top of that the kids come first to school they've got that supply list and some of those children will not be buying the composition books or have a backpack or have some of the basic things that they need. And so

recognizing that teaching tools is is out there. We do supply drives as I say we've got them going now and we asked community to give us some of those supplies and you know go find families or go out and they're buying for their own children and maybe they buy an extra couple extra glue sticks or colored pencils or crayons. And we have collection spots and they'll you know they'll drop them off. We take them to teaching tools. We've got a warehouse wearable well stocked with whatever we've got. We'll repackage it so the teachers can come out and. No charge for the teachers. They call it shopping but again there is no charge they have a little clipboard and they can take however many items and they'll use books for the classroom library they'll take things craft supplies for their their work in the classroom. But a lot of it just goes straight to the kids. They'll buy. I mean they'll get a bunch of pencils and a. You know we find that pencils crayons colored pencils

glue sticks are and composition books are the things that are needed more often than anything else. Do other counties follow this model and have teaching tools also. They do it's actually been a growing movement that more districts are doing something to be able to gather some supplies and give them out to the students who are in need. It may not be part of the Education Foundation and may not be called teaching tools but that almost all the education foundations give out grants which is something that we do as well and will talk about grants a little bit later but we visited teaching tools for Hillsborough schools recently. Once you get past its rather industrial looking facade teaching tools looks like any other store with a clear emphasis on education shoppers with carts roll past stacks of those pencils papers books searching and selecting. Teaching tools is a store that is been designed to help support schools that are tied to one that has the highest percentage of students who are living at or below poverty level and the teachers can come and shop for

their children. In their classrooms right now we're serving seven of the schools and those are schools that have 60 percent or more of the kids that currently are on the free or reduced lunch program. Teachers can come and shop. They can take away what we call 25 items that may be two packages of crayons one package of copy paper whatever that may be typically amounts to about two hundred and eighty dollars. Everybody. Came out to take advantage of the teaching tools to get a lot of resources that a lot of budget cuts recently I guess everyone knows about and have a hard time kind of keeping a low school supplies or teaching tools really helps us out quite a bit. But that give us some of the students the material was the need to get the best education we can. Just to get some phrase that actually got my classroom I'm a first year teacher so I didn't realize how much that I didn't have rushed over here and I just had a great time

and pulling everything off the shelves. The thing that I would have to come out of pocket. Him and. Go away. And beginning a new year and looking for something to start my classroom boys and school supplies Henson's for them and folders. The teachers love it. I mean just think about it. In most cases teachers are spending anywhere between you know 500 to a thousand dollars a year all their own pocket just to help their classroom. Keep things going provide things for children who don't have it here they can come and pick up the cost and they think they just take a few months of their time come out shopping the store and get those just a few flights. Here with a lot of disadvantaged students so the families can help out as much the teaching tool really helps us take a little bit farther than we normally could go. Our school gets many donations so we get some items from our school. Other teachers we share in flip flops. So we can get free from there but most often I shop at like Wal-Mart or the dollar store.

I think you know carry teachers and a lot of soon go without. So this kind of helps the pocketbooks of a lot of the teachers at our school also at the teacher orientation actually to come and visit and then as I was talking to teachers at my school they were just like go to the free store. You don't want to miss out. So they kind of push me over here and I'm glad. I think it's a wonderful place and I'm glad we have it and especially in this economic times it's been a blessing for my family. The store hours for the teacher shopping is on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 3:30 to 6:30 and then on Saturdays. The program itself is open however five days a week so people can come in and see the program in action actually toured the store and then also be able to drop off donations if they want. If anyone's watching please come out and makes more donations to teach that we can. Have a lot more stuff for kids. Right now we're doing our big stuff the bus campaign and

drives all over the county. You know there's more than 100 businesses participating in that. Various sites and hopefully will gather enough of those basic school supplies to last for most of the year for the store. So what kind of feedback to hear from teachers about the star well they love it we like people to visit during shopping hours because that way the teachers can come and talk to them about what it means for them to be able to take these things and go back into the classroom with it. And you know the interesting thing is the message that it goes to students as well. There are people in the community who don't know them who they don't know who care enough about them and their success they're willing to donate materials or even funds. So the students can have what they need. The Real Romney message. So some things are donated and some you have the cash to go buy. Where do you purchase supplies. We have a variety of places we can get him at very low prices. And we work to make sure that the funds coming in go as far as

they possibly can. The vast majority of things that we get are donated some things people when we do a supply drop people don't think of copy paper for example. Teachers are given an allocation of copy paper form when they're doing work sheets or tests or whatever. But when that's gone they're out at Staples or Office Depot and they're buying for themselves. So we started something this past year which is growing called the carton club. We're asking businesses who are already buying copy paper just buy an extra case and have it dropped at the store. And we're using that then to give out to the teachers. OK and you mentioned earlier about grants you have this last room grant I'd like to talk about where this puts cash directly into the hands of the teachers. Explain. Way back when we realized that teachers had some wonderful ideas that maybe they didn't have the ability to fund. And so we went out in the community we found an interest in supporting that number of donors to give towards a grants fund and then we put out requests for proposals to the teachers and we've

actually since expanded beyond the classroom. So the principals can can propose and submit a grant for up to $5000 for their school and something that's going to impact multiple classrooms. So either teachers or principals kind of my and then who decides who gets the grants. Well we asked the community to help us with that. We start with the donors and those who have donated. We have formed committees they have score sheets they we help them with some guidelines on how to evaluate the ideas and really neat creative things and they'll score what they think is most responsive to whatever it is it's trying to accomplish it may be. You know there's a great grant that bought a meteorological station for one of the middle schools. And so as the teachers were trying to teach weather and describing how you measure wind direction and speed what and how they could go out and actually see the instruments. And it's something that's going to be around for years it's not like one teacher one classroom one year is benefiting benefiting from it.

And quickly another program with that switch that brings to mind a hands on meeting a logical you also have Nature's Classroom Let's get you out of the classroom and I really mean it's a huge commitment on the district's part every single sixth grader in the district spends three days in Nature's Classroom which is a wonderful I'm sure many of your viewers have been out there as students and some now their children are going out there were were in some cases up to third generation because it's been around for 40 years. But the best way to learn about the environment very experience will you know when they get their feet dirty they get in the river they get to look at the critters and the staff are wonderful out there. It's an experience my children our 20 plus years old now but they remember their day at Nature's Classroom and then moving beyond high school some of these kids lots of these kids have the grades the qualifications and everything else to get to go to either college grade school but they don't have the money. So you also have a scholarship program. We do that was one of the first things that we started we found that there were a lot of people who wanted to

provide scholarships for graduates of Hillsborough County schools because those are the youngsters that are more most likely to graduate come back and contribute to our community. So over the last two years combined we gave out over 1 1/2 million dollars worth of scholarships to students. And some of them based on financial need a lot of them based on academic performance and students going all over from local colleges to Harvard. So I want to recap that these programs are why they have vailable through these foundations and many counties and that you take donations from everything from corporations to a private citizen who says hey I'll buy you an extra box of pencils. Let's talk about Hillsborough County exclusively again for just a moment Florida has pretty dismal graduation rates but locally here we're making some progress the magazine Education Week calculated that Wright County graduated sixty two point six percent of its students in 2006 and that puts it number two among the ten biggest districts in Florida and it had a panellist fifty point three percent

despite elsewhere having a greater percentage of poor and minority students as you mentioned. What does that say about Hillsborough County. Well I think it's a commitment. It's it's a huge drones these days students are being distracted by everything that you can imagine a lot more challenges I think than than when I was in school at least and has been focusing on student achievement for a number of years now they've got the accelerator program the. One offers many AP courses is possible and you know what. I think that's a great example of that's not simply to get college credit for these students what that's doing is giving very rigorous classes to the students and the interesting thing you'll find out about dropouts for the most part it's not because they can't handle the coursework it's because they're bored about the coursework. And the best way to get past the boredom is to challenge is not to dumbing down the curriculum but actually to make it more challenging more interesting and more relevant. And there's a there's a whole movement nationwide.

The new three R's are rigor relevance and relationships because you want those classes to be difficult you want them to be understandable you don't want theoretical math you want math as applied to a potential job. And then you need to have a relationship with someone at the school so you know you feel good when you're doing well because when you look at graduation rates like 50 and 60 percent that's that's not what we're striving for crap out of our schools entirely at the mercy of their money from state federal tax donations or what can they do to improve the quality of education outside of all the things we've talked about. Well there are. We need a couple hours actually for things that potentially could be done. There's always decisions being made with resources and now with more limited resources. How do you best utilize those so that you can offer the course work you can do the training you can have the qualified teachers you can retain the teachers who are who are capable. You know all those things are constantly being looked at and the neat thing about the state of Florida is that for you know

because of our last governor frankly we have a great data gathering system and you have foundations from outside the state who are looking at Florida saying well you know between the f k plus plus program and all of this data gathering that's being done. It's a great feedback loop so you can tell if something's not working in an area it may not be is you know prescriptive as one would like but at least you can identify literacy something we need to work on or science is something we need to work on. And so it's a continuous improvement process. So he did waive your personal magic wand and say Here is what I would do to fix I help schools but when me. I think the schools all of them. The easiest thing to do would have more community involvement you know. Recently you've had some schools that have had low grades. They've been struggling. If you look at common denominators there you don't have as much many people in the community who are involved. And yes we would all

like some more money and we would all like more staff and teachers and everything else. I think from a practical standpoint though it doesn't necessarily cost a lot for someone who says well you know I graduated from this high school and I have some pride in making sure that they start performing better. So define involvement what that person do. It could be depends on the level it could be going to an elementary school in reading to students who could be helping in the media center. It could be at the high school level it could be tutoring. It could be mentoring and if you don't have an expertise in an area we've got a mentoring program. It may be the best stained school program there is because these are all at risk kids we've got about 300 many of whom have already got a scholarship so when they graduate they will have to issue unpaid but they have no role model in their lives. That has been to college and for them college telling they're going to college maybe doc telling them they're going to play for the Rays. Yeah right. Well guess what. They can go to college and it takes someone who's been there who sits down with them and the

commitment doesn't have to be huge you could be in our week at the school where they sit down create a relationship with a youngster and on some youngsters starting to have to reset their mental tape and realize yeah I can go to the FCC or USF or maybe even somewhere else. So if you want to do something like that it's as simple as calling the school district school district call the foundation between us we can always put you together with some opportunity. And I think there's some thinking out there that well I don't have a kid in public school so hey why should I get involved. You would obviously disagree with that. We have. I wish I could pull up the statistics off the top of my head but a huge percentage of our mentors do not have students in school. In fact I found that when my children graduated high school I had more time so I could spend more time mentoring. There had before and it's the other neat thing about it is the people who are mentoring come back to us and say I think I'm getting more out of it than the student does. I think I'm going to more benefit out of it helping that student them than they are helping them.

And we'll quickly mention that there's a raid Raider called Charity Navigator. How well an organization is doing and you recently got four stars which means that that's the highest ranking for a nonprofit. You want to support and again these nonprofits exist around Florida and we thank you for helping to explain them to us and we hope it's a good school year. Thank you. Thanks for being here Bill. To learn more about the Hillsborough Education Foundation you can call 8 1 3 2 3 1 1 9 0 1 Are visit Education Foundation dot com and other counties you can search the internet to find the foundation serving your schools or call your local school district offices. This episode of up close may be viewed in its entirety at an org. Thanks for watching. I'm Cathy Areu and I'll see you next time on. Up Close. Such as windy and say look the drunkard was up in those examples

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Andrew Kohut president of the Pew Research Center tells us what the rest of the world is thinking about the United States and discusses a world opinion survey spanning 50 countries. Join us next time on w edu interview. Ok too choppy OK. Andrew Kohut president of the Pew Research Center tells us what the rest of the world is thinking about the United States and discusses world opinion survey spanning 50 countries. Joining us the story I always think it's strange when we

call it the interview. All right. I know I should be the. OK here we go. Andrew Kohut president of the Pew Research Center tells us what the rest of the world is thinking about the United States and discusses world opinion survey spanning 50 countries. Joining it story Andrew Kohut president of the Pew Research Center tells us what the rest of the world is thinking about the United States and discusses a world opinion survey spanning 50 countries. Join us next time on interview. You're happy. OK.