Lake Washington Schools Foundation Programs
Core Academic Summer School (CASS) (Equal Access to Educational Opportunities) – provides tuition for low-income, academically at-risk students to attend CASS. The program focuses on language and math skills to help reduce learning loss over the summer and allow the students to “hit the ground running” at the start of the new school year.
Reaching for Success Grants (Quality Teaching, Equal Access, Future Ready Skills) – makes funds available to all schools in the Lake Washington School District for innovative and creative projects that enhance or expand the Lake Washington School District curriculum in the classroom, inspire learning, and help schools meet their CIP (Continuous Improvement Plan) goals.
LINKS (Equal Access, Future Ready Skills) - LINKS recruits and trains caring members of the community to volunteer one hour or more per week in LWSD schools. Volunteer opportunities include academic mentor, tutor, lunch buddy, and general classroom assistance. LINKS volunteers support academic achievement, give confidence to students in developing relationships with others, and help students acquire the skills needed for lifelong success. Funding is provided by the Foundation exclusively through grant writing.
STEM – Currently the district is developing a district-wide STEM curriculum, funded in part by a $130,000 grant from Microsoft. We are researching potential sources for additional funding.
Recent Successes and Current Challenges
With the elimination of Title 1 funding in Spring 2010, LWSF stepped in to fund 58 low income elementary school students who were academically at risk to allow them to attend LWSD’s Core Academic Summer School in Summer 2010. Many of these students were also English language learners. Research shows students who do not speak English at home or do not engage in educational activities over the summer lose 1-2 months of their learning, and more than half of the achievement gap between varying income levels is related to access to summer learning opportunities. Not all of the CASS students funded by LWSF received before and after skill assessments, but for the students who did, 85% of the students remained at the same level in Math and 83% remained at the same level in Reading. For summer school in 2011, LWSF is doubling its support to 120 students.
LWSF seeks support to build on the work already underway in LWSD to ensure quality teaching and leadership. LWSD programs such as the New Teacher Support Program (NTSP) focus on new teachers as well as mentoring for Professional Certification and National Boards. Teacher induction and mentoring in the first two years has been shown to dramatically decrease teacher attrition, and dramatically increase teacher effectiveness. LWSD attrition data supports this conclusion. State budget cuts amounting to $12m in the last four years have significantly reduced funding available for programs such as NTSP that focus on quality teaching.