Foundation picks up STEAM

Bentonville schools group taking new approach in giving

BENTONVILLE — The Bentonville Schools Foundation plans to spend about $265,000 this year on a new giving strategy that emphasizes innovation and enrichment activities related to science, technology, engineering, math and the arts.

Marcus Osborne, foundation president, said school administrators and parents are wildly interested in those subject areas, commonly referred to by the acronym STEAM.

“So our focus is going to be around how can we raise funds and invest funds into the schools that actually improve the quality of STEAM enrichment in the district,” Osborne said, addressing the School Board on Tuesday.

Much of the foundation’s giving in recent years has focused on hardware investment, providing teachers a classroom set of iPads or laptop computers through the School District’s 21st Century Technology program, which ran from 2012 to 2015. The foundation also received and funded grant applications from teachers ranging from a few hundred to several thousand dollars each.

There are two parts to the foundation’s new strategy.

One part involves creating pots of money for each school in the district. The average amount going to each school will be $10,000. Each school will be required to submit some kind of a plan for how it will use the money, especially for STEAM activities, Osborne said.

“We want to hear what their story is,” he said. “We know each school is unique. We don’t want to see the same thing over and over. We want to see the schools in some ways bring their unique story forward. We want to see

“We want to see them [schools] compete with one another. But they are going to have to earn that money.”

— Marcus Osborne, foundation president

them compete with one another. But they are going to have to earn that money.”

The other part of the strategy is a new spin on the foundation’s tradition of giving teachers grants. The foundation is creating six $5,000 grants for teachers or schools wanting to try a particularly innovative program or idea, Osborne said.

Tim Sparacino, principal at Washington Junior High School, wrote in an email principals were informed last week of the foundation’s plans. He shared those plans

with his staff, and they’re starting to devise ideas and processes for securing the foundation’s grants.

“I think that it is an exciting change that has the potential to have an even bigger positive impact on students than the previous method of awarding the grants,” Sparacino wrote.

STEAM has long been a big focus at the school, “and we see this as a tremendous opportunity to enrich the learning experiences of our students on an even larger scale,” he said.

The $265,000 is more than four times what the foundation distributed last school year, he said.

Travis Riggs, School Board

president, asked how the foundation plans to divide up its money among the district’s 22 schools.

Osborne said the foundation is weighing options. One is to give $10,000 to each school. Another is to base the distribution on each school’s enrollment; in that scenario, each school would receive roughly between $8,000 and $13,000, he said.

Marilyn Gilchrist, principal of Ardis Ann Middle School, said the large dollar amounts are exciting, and a little daunting, too. She’s pleased the foundation is looking at funding through building-wide and teacher-specific lenses.

“We have some technology needs to address as a building, but I’m more interested in learning what ideas the teachers have. They are the

innovators,” Gilchrist said.

Superintendent Debbie Jones said it seems the foundation has put a lot of thought into the strategy. She doesn’t think foundation officials have been completely happy with grant applications the last few years, Jones said.

“They expected more innovation, and they weren’t sure that the money they sent to those individual grants were supporting the whole mission of the school,” she said. “So with the new plan, they have higher expectations as far as it being something that will move the school ahead.”

The district’s student-to-computer ratio is nearly at one-to-one, and maintaining that ratio is the district’s responsibility, Jones said. That has freed the foundation to invest in other areas.

The foundation raises most of its money through an annual fall fundraiser and from its annual Gold Rush Fun Run and 5-kilometer race, which raised nearly $40,000 in 2016. Osborne said the foundation also is cultivating corporate sponsorships.

“What we’re finding is there are a number of companies in town that are very interested in supporting the schools. They are trying to get their name and brand in front of families in the district,” he said.

The foundation can provide opportunities for that with events such as Gold Rush and an annual teacher of the year award ceremony, Osborne said.