Our Board has voted to continue supporting Everyday Leadership and Garfield Elementary School through a District Grant for $10,000. The District will match our contribution of $5,000.
Everyday Leadership Program Proposal
Over the last school year, Everyday Leadership activities and expenditures have had to be adjusted to comply with COVID19 safety measures. In the fall semester, Everyday Leadership's classes and community service projects were cancelled. Fortunately, the Rotary Foundation allowed us to use the unused funds to assemble Home Learning Kits for low-income students attending the schools. The kits were designed by school teachers to include items that would facilitate virtual learning for students whose homes lacked these resources. In total, 1,250 students were using our Home Learning Kits this past fall.
Continuation of school closures in the spring semester prevented in-person resumption of the program. Fortunately, by the end of the fall semester, the YMCA had created an Everyday Leadership curriculum suitable for virtual learning. The Everyday Leadership program was resumed by all the schools after the Christmas holidays. We even had a new school, Morley Nelson Elementary School, that has adopted the program while we have been in this pandemic. As a result, Everyday Leadership is now being offered at seven of the eight Title I schools in the Boise School District. At this time, leadership classes and community service projects are occurring at all the participating schools. In fact, Jeff Larsen and Charlene Ellen from our club joined Sonia Galaviz and the Garfield students for a Boise River Cleanup in January. In total, 107 students are participating in the program. Student interest is high, so we expect the total number of participants to approach the maximum of 20 per school as set by COVID restrictions.Looking Ahead to next school year (2021-22), Rotary hopes to continue the program at the seven schools. We anticipate the number of participants will increase to about 165 if the COVID19 maximum of 20 per class is no longer needed. The support of Boise Metro, Boise Sunrise, and the Rotary District Matching Grant program are key to providing this ongoing program support.
We are asking the Rotary Club of Boise Metro to consider renewing its current partnership with Boise Sunrise in applying for matching District Grant funding to support the existing 7 participating schools. In addition to the support of the Rotary Clubs of Boise Sunrise and Boise Metro, we continue to look for additional partners to fund the growth of this program. Our hope is to add the last Title I Boise school as additional sponsorship funds become available.