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In The News
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 12, 2007
CONTACT:
Bill Maxfield, 831-227-6469
SANTA
CRUZ EDUCATION FOUNDATION LAUNCHES NEWS & INFORMATION WEBSITE TO
SERVE SANTA CRUZ CITY SCHOOLS COMMUNITY
SANTA CRUZ—The Santa Cruz
Education Foundation today announced the launch of a news and
information Website that will serve the 10 campuses of the Santa Cruz
City Schools District. Called The Eddy:
Currents in Santa Cruz Education, the new Website will launch
Thursday, September 13.
With The Eddy, the
Education Foundation intends to strengthen the Santa Cruz City Schools
community by empowering people with relevant and compelling information.
Content will include:
·
School-specific
calendar items
·
News about student
achievements and more
·
Information on
school board and district committee meetings
·
Policy news
·
Ongoing "Did
you know?" feature
·
Links to education
news and resources including local news outlets, as well as school and
education-related Websites
The Eddy will be updated
online continuously and promoted via a monthly email update.
Users will have the opportunity to sign up to receive email
updates (so-called RSS feed) whenever new content is posted.
About Santa Cruz City Schools
District
The district includes 10 campuses
that serve approximately 7,200 students preK-12th grade, as well as more
than 7,000 students through the district Adult School programs that are
located in more than 40 locations in Santa Cruz County.
·
Elementary schools:
Bay View, DeLaveaga, Gault and Westlake
·
Middle schools:
Branciforte and Mission Hill
·
High schools:
Harbor, Santa Cruz and Soquel
·
Branciforte Small
Schools Campus: Alternative Family Education, Ark Independent Studies,
Costanoa High School, Monarch School
About the Santa Cruz Education
Foundation
The Santa Cruz Education
Foundation is a community organization that promotes excellence in Santa
Cruz City Schools by developing and enhancing programs so that all
students can realize their full potential. For more information, please
visit www.sceducation.org
.
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| Cynthia Hawthorne President Santa Cruz Education Foundation |
Amy Escobar Site Council President Harbor High School |
Caren Spencer Site Council President Soquel High School |
Susan Rose Site Council President Santa Cruz High School |
Dear Friend,
A dynamic new alliance has been formed between the non-profit Santa Cruz Education Foundation and the Greater Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce. Working together on a shared vision for excellence in our local public schools, we are reaching out to the business community to raise funds for local academic programs. We need your help in translating concern into positive action to restore and revitalize academic programs for all our Santa Cruz City schools students, K-12.
According to the recently released Rand Corporation report, California schools now rank 49th in per pupil funding. For Santa Cruz, this translates to at least $2000 less per child than the national average. The erosion of academic programs is well under way in our Santa Cruz public schools. For example, it’s shocking to learn that program offerings such as middle school Spanish and science lab, available just a few years ago, are not only gone but are not remembered. United in purpose, the Education Foundation and the Chamber believe we have a unique opportunity to stop the erosion.
We know that as a member of the business community, you understand that investment in quality education today is the best way to insure an educated and capable workforce for tomorrow. A recent Santa Cruz Chamber member survey shows that Chamber members share a commitment to ensuring current students are well prepared for college entrance and future careers.
The Chamber has identified education as a core value and area of focus. Recognizing the Foundation’s independent, non-profit status and it’s commitment to supporting all of the students in Santa Cruz City Schools, the Chamber is asking the business community to step to the plate and invest in our local schools through the Santa Cruz Education Foundation.
The Chamber and the Education Foundation truly share a vision for excellence in our local public schools. Together, the Education Foundation and the Chamber are in a unique position to unite the community and improve the quality of academic education for all our Santa Cruz City School children. Like never before, energy and vision exists to run this campaign successfully. But we need your support to make it happen.
For more information about the Foundation, visit www.sceducation.org or call 831-427-8212. For more information about the Chamber’s commitment to education, call 831-457-3713. Please give generously today.
Sincerely,
| Cynthia Hawthorne President Santa Cruz Education Foundation |
Greg Carter Executive Director Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce |
Santa Cruz Sentinel - December 5, 2004Schools foundation bringing ‘hose to fire’Santa Cruz Education Foundation marries grassroots zeal with old-time fund-raisingBy NANCY PASTERNACK |
 Katie Attema unfurls a roll of stamps while Ruth Talbot readies the envelopes in the Bay View Elementary School multi-purpose room during a volunteer mailing session for the Santa Cruz Education Foundation. (Shmuel Thaler / Sentinel) |
SANTA CRUZ — As a Santa Cruz City Schools mom, Cynthia Hawthorne already had witnessed plenty of district budget woe.
But during a parent orientation meeting at Mission Hill Middle School early this year, she decided she’d seen enough.
The school, which had provided Hawthorne’s older daughter with language and arts classes and a full range of sports programs, recently lost these to budget cuts.
"I went to enroll my daughter in Spanish, and there wasn't any," Hawthorne said. "That’s what got me started."
District schools — like most in the state — have been languishing under starved budgets, especially during the past four years, according to Bill Maxfield, who chairs the Santa Cruz Education Foundation’s communications committee. California, which ranks among the lowest states in the nation for per-pupil schools funding, closed more than 100 schools last year, due in part to declining student enrollment.
In addition to closing Branciforte and Natural Bridges Elementary Schools, many academic programs in remaining Santa Cruz schools have been cut or are threatened.
Hawthorne, president of the district’s Education Foundation, is on a crusade to salvage or restore dozens of those programs. Hawthorne’s cadre is joining forces with an existing foundation to launch the first districtwide mail and telephone campaign.
The merged group’s leaders say they have plans to become members of the Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce, and hope to gain the sponsorship of area businesses.
She generated blank stares when she declared, in all seriousness, "I think we should just ask people for the money."
But five weeks later, a mass mailing to "parents and friends" of the school and some follow-up phone calls had netted $50,000 in donations — enough to fully fund a year of Spanish, sports, and arts, including yoga, photography, self-defense and textile arts.
"We got checks from grandmas and aunties and baby-sitters," Hawthorne said.
She was not surprised by the windfall, she said, "but others were shocked." Those others included district administrators, who have since called to express their support for her group’s effort.
"I’m sure it was quite the topic of conversation over the summer," she said, chuckling.
But even as Mission Hill funds were still being collected, Hawthorne, Maxfield, and Janet Swann, who now chairs an effort to restore classroom programs, were expanding their mission to include the entire district.
In June, they joined forces with the already-existing education foundation, becoming a much-enlarged and refined fund-raising machine.
The existing group, which Maxfield calls "a more traditional foundation model" had endowment plans and nonprofit status applications already under way.
The long-term endowment approach is important, Maxfield said. But current budget crises also call for direct fund-raising strategies.
"We can’t just sit around writing grants and hoping to get some money some day. That’s not acceptable," he said. "The needs are huge right now."
Or to put it another way, said Hawthorne, "There’s a fire — we need a hose."
Miriam Stombler, whose two daughters attend Gault Elementary, moved to Santa Cruz from San Francisco three years ago, drawn in large part, to the area’s schools.
"The schools here felt really alive," she said, "and they’re nestled in the community — they’re not apart from it."
But when low student enrollment led to last year’s final decision to close two schools, Stombler saw a different side of the district.
The process of deciding which schools had to go, said the foundation volunteer, "set neighborhood against neighborhood and school against school."
"It really did surprise me," she said, "just how dramatically these (funding) cuts threatened to undermine the community."
"We’re fighting over crumbs," said Education Foundation supporter Jane Weed, a former Santa Cruz mayor.
Two of Weed’s four children graduated from Santa Cruz schools. Two more are still in the system.
"We used to think they were cutting down to the bone," she said. "And that was five years ago."
School site fund-raisers — now necessary to fund basic school supplies — have become ubiquitous and are exhausting to everyone, she said, especially students.
"The kids are constantly working to hawk their wares," she said. "Every time I turn around it’s, ‘Oh God, not another door-to-door sale.’ Cookie dough, and gift wrap, and on and on. It never seems to end."
Erin-Kate Escobar, a senior at Harbor High School, knows the drill all too well.
"We recently had a pizza fund-raiser so the school could have ink cartridges and toilet paper," she said with a hint of world-weariness. "Those are considered ‘extras.’ "
While individual schools sell pizza for basic work materials, Hawthorne said the primary mission of her group is to put donation dollars directly into classrooms for specific school programs.
"There’s no PE in elementary upper grades now," she said. "It went away two years ago. That’s ridiculous given current childhood obesity issues."
For her daughter’s last year at Bayview Elementary, Hawthorne said, a mom volunteered to show up at school each day to run a makeshift exercise program.
"They’re doing their best, believe me," she said, "but it’s just not the same as having a trained teacher."
Physical education is one of three programs the foundation lists as its restoration priorities for the district’s elementary schools. The others are life lab science, and art and music programs.
Such programs, said Swann, a former schoolteacher,"used to be part of the school curriculum, then they became ‘enrichment programs,’ then they went out the door."
"I’m calling to see if you received our letter," she said.
A credit union employee who’d spent his evening calling strangers for the Education Foundation was on his way out the door when Hawthorne stopped him.
"Are there any phones we could use at the credit union?" she asked the volunteer. He said no.
"Well, you know me," Hawthorne said cheerfully, " always asking."
Her daughter, Makaela Pollock worked an Education Foundation phone bank recently from the Greater Santa Cruz Federation of Teachers office on Mission Street.
A graduate of Santa Cruz High School and Vassar College, Pollock said she has compared notes with her younger sister and is surprised at changes the recent budget squeezes have wrought.
"They run schools with fewer teachers," she said.
Her younger sister "is not aware of the richness that used to
be here. I saw the tail end of it," she said.
George Martinez, co-president of the teachers’ union, said the foundation
and the federation of teachers have the same ends in mind, and he is happy
to let the group use his offices.
He is especially supportive, he said, of the foundation’s intention to help fund a reduction in ninth-grade math and English class sizes.
"If we have to let them use our office to make phone calls,
so be it," he said.
As for responses to volunteer phone calls, Hawthorne said 65 percent of
the calls result in a message left on an answering machine. People who
answer, she claims, are generally receptive.
"They say, ‘Nobody ever asked me to help before. They get it. They understand the position that this is for all the children, equally.’
"Santa Cruz people are so open. They actually listen to us."
Hawthorne seems to keep a batch of motivational reminders on hand at all times.
"If we don’t raise the funds this year, the programs won’t be there next year," reads one. "If every family in the district would give $100, we wouldn’t have a budget shortfall," reads another.
Martinez said if it works, it’s all good.
"We all know we’re not going to get any help from Washington
or Sacramento," he said. "If we want our kids to get
a good education, we’re going to have to do this all ourselves."
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