![]() “We learned to fundraise in order to get that grant, and it really was kind of a catalyst to our future.” Since winning the grant, the organization has raised about $15,000 more. A raffle at the dinner raised a good part of the $1,000 the PTU needed for the grant. “Everyone ate for free, everyone was welcome,” Anker-Lagos says. Then it recruited eager parent volunteers and put together a plan to power up its efforts, including hosting Sabores del Mundo (Flavors of the World), a potluck dinner where families brought traditional dishes to share. Determined to grab the opportunity, the group sought fundraising strategies from other schools via the WLC. Anker-Lagos says that raising the matching funds was a challenge the PTU was only two years old at the time and had nearly nothing in its bank account. The PTU’s ability to generate seed money for such events was developed, in part, because of its application for a $1,000 matching grant from the WLC. The school’s PTO hosted two family fun nights and saw a significant increase in volunteer commitments, according to both Withycombe and DCPS. (The principal at Kimball acknowledges that reading proficiency improved by 4 points between the 2015-16 and the 2016-17 school years but believes the summer reading program is just one of the factors.) The grant money also helped increase parent involvement at Orr Elementary in Southeast. “At the end of the year, 72 percent were on grade level.” Students at another WLC grant recipient, Kimball Elementary in Southeast, advanced in reading after the Parent Teacher Student Association hosted a summer reading Olympics with books bought with WLC grant money, he says. “At the start of the 2016 school year, 27 percent of students were on grade level with math,” says Withycombe. One 2016 grant recipient, the PTA at Cleveland Elementary, a low-income school in Northwest, used a portion of its grant money to pay for a subscription to a popular online math program for each of its students. Kent Withycombe, the director of the WLC’s Public Education Project, thinks the grants are helping to shrink the achievement gap, a belief that is somewhat backed by DCPS statistics. ![]() "Every dollar that we raised was blood, sweat and tears," she says, "and then we didn't use it all." But she saw the same pattern as an ADCA board member at Deal in 2011-12: After vigorous fundraising throughout the school year and money spent on amenities and enrichments, that organization had a significant surplus as well. "I didn't have the courage or the sway" to move it forward. (Apparently such surpluses are not unusual the Lafayette HSA sent an email to parents in February stating that "due to legacy budget surpluses, the HSA entered this school year with a cash balance of $280,000.") She suggested sharing some of those resources with minimally funded PTOs in the city but says that didn't go over well. ![]() She recalls noticing at the end of one school year that the organization had accumulated a significant surplus, even after covering expenses including technology, science enrichment classes, art and music programs, and athletic uniforms. Diana Rojas, Thompson's partner in the School to School Initiative, had been disturbed by the disparity in school PTO fundraising since she was a board member of Lafayette's HSA between 20.
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