Our partnership with BVSD prepared more students for Kindergarten

One of the magical ingredients to our work is our partnership with the Boulder Valley School District. We’re much stronger when we work together, and our Kinder Bridge program is a prime example.

Why we became a champion for early learning

Preparing students for that all-important first year of formal schooling allows us to address opportunity gaps facing our youngest learners. The BVSD community is diverse in many ways, welcoming students from different races, cultures, economic and family backgrounds.

Because we know school readiness can impact everything from reading at grade level to graduating high school to being career ready later in life, Impact on Education partnered with Boulder Housing Partners over six years ago to start offering a summer program that provided high quality early learning experiences to preschool age students heading to BVSD. In 2022 this program was woven into BVSD’s summer learning, allowing us to serve four times the number of students and provide 50% more instructional hours.

What Kinder Bridge offers students

This past summer, 170 rising Kindergarten students with identified risk factors participated in our Kinder Bridge program. These students wouldn’t have otherwise had access to summer preschool and would have arrived in our kindergarten classrooms less prepared than their peers. The new partnership allowed us to:

• Increase the number of students served, enrolling 170 preschoolers from 30 schools at three sites in Boulder and Lafayette
• Enroll 40% Free and Reduced Price Meals (FRPM) students
• Provide BVSD transportation to make the program accessible to all students
• Double instructional hours, providing 80 hours of instruction focusing on letter recognition, counting, letter sound formation and recognition, name-writing, executive functioning and social emotional skills

The impact of the 2022 Kinder Bridge program

While many students were already demonstrating Kindergarten-level behaviors at the beginning of the summer, all students saw growth on the BVSD TS-Gold Kindergarten Readiness Assessment, and 65% left the program within the expected range of a kindergartener one month into the school year. The greatest gains were in identifying letter-sound correspondences and taking care of their own needs appropriately.

Class attendance averaged 86% across the three sites and 92% of families indicated plans to enroll their students in BVSD Kindergarten.

Looking ahead to 2023 we’ll continue working closely and proactively with BVSD to improve and enroll students in our Kinder Bridge program.

*The BVSD TS-Gold Kindergarten Readiness Assessment measures literacy/letter recognition, numeracy/number recognition and counting, and executive functioning skills necessary to engage productively and positively in a kindergarten class.

BEFORE YOU GO …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We need your help to to provide opportunity and resources to 30,000 students and 4,000 educators in the Boulder Valley School District.

Local elementary teachers go the extra yard

Check out more photos on Facebook >>

Each year, we partner with the College Football Playoff Foundation to recognize educators going the extra yard in the Boulder Valley School District. The Extra Yard for Teachers Award honors great educators and reminds teachers across the country that they are valued and respected.

The impact of this year’s awardees

Two educators with Louisville Elementary School, Nicole Duster and Caroline Fassora, were honored this year with the Extra Yard for Teachers Award. Nicole and Caroline go the extra yard for their students in many ways, but we’re sharing two ways they support equity and opportunity for all students at Louisville Elementary. 

When students live within a mile of Louisville Elementary they cannot take a BVSD bus to school, but they don’t always have a safe and reliable way to get to school. Nicole and Caroline worked with RTD to coordinate transportation via RTD’s FlexRide, funded by Impact on Education, to remove this obstacle for at-risk students and their families, leading to increased attendance rates. 

They’ve also done extensive work building Louisville Elementary’s Families and Educators Together (FET), a team of educators and family members partnering together to create a more inclusive community to support the well-being of all students and families. FET helps foster cross-cultural learning, encourages meaningful dialogue, and equips families who are historically under-represented to advocate for their childrens’ education. Most recently, Nicole helped coordinate child care at FET meetings across the district to enable more families to be able to attend and fully participate.

Two special celebrations

On Tuesday, September 20, Louisville Elementary hosted University of Colorado spirit squad, and of course, Chip, to celebrate Nicole and Caroline and present a $1000 check to support their work. The awardees were also honored on the field during halftime at the CU Buffs football game on Saturday, September 24 and received an additional $7,000 check for Impact on Education to continue to support the needs at Louisville Elementary and other BVSD schools. 

Check out more photos on Facebook >>

BEFORE YOU GO …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We need your help to to provide opportunity and resources to 30,000 students and 4,000 educators in the Boulder Valley School District.

Thank you for supporting Impact on Education

We are humbled by the outpouring of support we received on Friday at our annual gala, Together We Build.

From the family style dining experience to the lively conversations to raising 56 paddles for our 56 schools, the evening was centered around community. Together we raised over $300,000 to help students build resilience, confidence and their path to success.

We had so much fun on Friday and shared all of the wonderful photos on Facebook >>

For those that were unable to join us, we invite you to watch a new video about how we are supporting students and educators in the Boulder Valley School District affected by the Marshall Fire.

We’re so grateful to have a strong community behind us making sure we can put our mission into action. Thank you for being part of our work!

BEFORE YOU GO …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We need your help to to provide opportunity and resources to 30,000 students and 4,000 educators of the Boulder Valley School District.

8,000 students provided with essential school supplies

Preschoolers returned to classrooms today, which means every school across Boulder Valley School District is filled with students, educators and staff eagerly anticipating the school year ahead.

Helping families in need

An important first step to the school year is ensuring every student starts the year with the supplies they need to be successful. In partnership with the St. Vrain Valley Schools Foundation and our Title Sponsor, Western Disposal Services, we helped over 8,000 students facing financial hardship through our Crayons to Calculators school supply distribution. Students across the Boulder Valley School District and St. Vrain Valley School District received grade-level appropriate school supplies, backpacks and headphones.

Ensuring every student has access to school supplies creates equitable classrooms across all grade-levels.

Our community stepped in to help

We’re pleased to share that our Crayons to Calculators Community Challenge exceeded its goal of raising 10% of the $250,000 program cost. Many local organizations worked hard to gather donations and thanks to these supporters and our program sponsors, we’re proud to support a strong start to the year for all students.

There’s still time to support back-to-school! You can make a gift toward our Community Challenge fundraiser through September 7.

---

BEFORE YOU GO …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We need your help to to provide opportunity and resources to 30,000 students and 4,000 educators of the Boulder Valley School District.

The Boulder Valley School District, Impact on Education, and CU Anschutz are partnering to offer a mental health literacy program—All Advocates for All Youth (ALLY)—to all 6th graders at Angevine Middle School. The program offers students the opportunity to engage in mental health awareness activities with volunteers in the fall of the 2022-23 school year.

Background-checked volunteers will participate in a self-paced 4-5 hour training before leading guided 1:1 sessions for 30 minutes with students on a weekly basis. 

The goal of this intervention is to provide support to all students by increasing their resilience and self-efficacy skills, and helping reduce their stress.

Volunteer commitment

This is a recurring commitment to regularly meet in-person at Angevine Middle for 2-4 hours every week for 6 weeks from October 1 through mid-November. Interaction with students requires that all volunteers pass a background check or renew an existing background check. All volunteers must also complete a 4-5 hour self-paced program training before September 25, 2022.

No prior experience is required to participate as a volunteer, but those able to commit to a set schedule for all 6 weeks or Spanish speaking volunteers are highly desired for this program.

Prior Ally volunteers in Colorado Springs, Colorado and Loachapoka, Alabama, reported enjoying this opportunity, often returning to the school to work with more students and citing improvements in their own mental health and wellbeing as a result of the volunteer experience.

Upcoming information sessions

No experience or special skills are required to participate, but community members are encouraged to attend a virtual information session to learn more about this volunteer opportunity. Four sessions will be offered on the following dates:

• Tuesday, August 23, 5:30-6pm
• Wednesday, August 24, 12-12:30pm
• Wednesday, August 31 12-12:30pm
• Thursday, September 1, 5:30-6pm

Register for a virtual information session here:
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0f4da8a628a1f4c16-learn

How this will impact BVSD students

By working with an entire grade level of students, the All Advocates for All Youth program will provide the entire Angevine community with a skill set and vocabulary that allows them to address their needs with each other. This method helps destigmatize mental health intervention and doesn’t target students based on behavioral or other incidents. This is the third round of a CU Anschutz clinical study and students are able to opt-out.

Four ways we’re driving change in BVSD classrooms

Over the years, we’ve catalyzed change in the Boulder Valley School District by piloting initiatives and accelerating innovation in classrooms and schools. Right now, we’re seeing four recent investments driving change for students.

Early dyslexia intervention

In 2019, BVSD was working to roll out a new phonics-based curriculum in elementary schools and begin screening Kindergarten students to identify those at risk for dyslexia, but they lacked the funds to quickly train all educators. Impact on Education, in partnership with Boulder Valley Kids Identified with Dyslexia (BVKID), stepped in to fund professional development and training for 46 BVSD interventionists and classroom educators.

The training took place in the summer of 2020 and meant that during the 2020-21 school year, every school in BVSD had at least one interventionist who was trained in the Orton Gillingham approach to better support students. In 2021, IOE also supplemented BVSD’s educator training, but we are pleased to share that this summer, BVSD made their biggest investment to date for this critical training opportunity by funding 85 elementary educators to participate in the training.

Helping students catch up on reading and math

Every student experienced disrupted learning in 2020 and 2021, and many now need extra support with their reading and math skills.

Last year, we partnered with BVSD to invest in the Really Great Reading curriculum to help students build foundation skills in reading, and students made wonderful progress:

• 285 students in eight schools used the curriculum
• 12 teachers were trained and provided materials for implementation
• Students who used RGR were almost twice as likely to improve their reading skills

To catch students up on math skills, we funded licenses for IXL Math at several BVSD schools during the 2021-22 school year. The original request came through our Academic Opportunity Fund and was quickly adopted across the district leading to impressive results:

• 5274 students in 23 schools used the program
• Students answered over 1,107,520 answered questions
• 33,808 skills were mastered and 64,770 skills deemed proficient

Seeing the success of these investments, BVSD is now funding the Really Great Reading curriculum more broadly throughout the district and paying for IXL Math access for all middle school students for the 2022-23 school year.

Preparing students for their futures

Beginning in 2019, we have worked in partnership with BVSD and external experts to build a vision of how to better prepare students for their futures. BVSD’s new GradPlus initiative is a direct result of the $40,000 investment we made to move this work forward and ensure BVSD has a solid roadmap and implementation plan to launch for the 2022-23 school year. GradPlus is a game changer in how BVSD will prepare students for their future and will make it far easier for students to gain credentials, work experience and post-secondary credit towards degrees while still in high school.

Driving change in BVSD

Catalytic change is one of our core values and it’s something we strive to do wherever possible. By investing in new tools for learning we’re providing new opportunities for students of all ages to see success in school.

---

BEFORE YOU GO …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We need your help to to provide opportunity and resources to 30,000 students and 4,000 educators of the Boulder Valley School District.

How BVSD families prioritize our work

With nearly 30,000 students enrolled in the Boulder Valley School District, we highly value the insights and opinions of their parents and guardians. Earlier this summer, we asked them some questions about our work and were thrilled to receive over 1,000 responses. 

As a thank you for responding, all participants were entered into a drawing for $50 King Soopers gift cards, and the winners are listed below.

What parents and guardians know about our work

The last school year was unlike any other and we were curious which of our investments BVSD families knew about. The top five investments were:

1. Supporting students and staff affected by the Marshall Fire
2. Providing backpacks and school supplies to students in need
3. Funding mental health staff, training and programming
4. Offering summer learning opportunities for rising Kindergarteners
5. Funding targeted tutoring

The importance of our investments

Our work focuses on three key areas: early childhood education, student success, and college and career readiness. While investments in these areas vary from year to year, BVSD families felt the most important work we do is:

1. Provide extra help and learning opportunities for students in need
2. Meet critical needs and respond to crises
3. Support BVSD educators
4. Address early childhood education
5. Address college and career readiness
6. Provide college scholarships
7. Spur innovation

Where we’re focusing this school year

As students prepare to return to schools, we’re working to ensure they start off strong by:

• distributing backpacks and school supplies to students with financial need
• launching another year of our Academic Opportunity Fund which provides mini-grants to educators and schools
• continuing to work with BVSD to provide accessible mental health support, and
• expanding our Career Readiness Academy to serve more students

How to stay in the loop

Over 60% of our respondents said they didn’t hear enough about our work. If you feel the same, we’d love to have you join our monthly e-newsletter or follow us on our active social media channels, primarily Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Gift card winners

Four respondents were randomly selected to win a $50 King Soopers gift card. Winners should have received an email with a link to your gift card. If you did not receive yours, please email info@impactoneducation.org. 

• Claire Peterson
• Carolyn Szoke
• Joel Kaar
• Maria Arellano

---

BEFORE YOU GO …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We need your help to to provide opportunity and resources to 30,000 students and 4,000 educators of the Boulder Valley School District.

IOE funding expands mental health support for BVSD students and staff

This post is an updated version of this article posted on February 25, 2022.

Children’s Hospital Colorado declared a pediatric mental health state of emergency in May of 2021, citing skyrocketing demand for mental health services among Colorado’s youth. In addition to the well-documented impact of the pandemic on mental health, our community also experienced a mass shooting and Colorado’s most destructive wildfire in 2021. 

BVSD is committed to providing mental health support for students from kindergarten through graduation. For young learners, sharing feelings and learning to work through problems will be all they ever know, and for older learners, having school-based support is critical to navigating mental health struggles.

We’re investing over $800,000 to support the ongoing mental health needs of students and staff throughout the Boulder Valley School District.

Mental health professional development for BVSD staff

School Age Care (SAC) staff serve a diverse group of students daily at 32 sites throughout Boulder Valley School District (BVSD). From grade levels to academic ability levels to emotional and behavioral health levels, SAC staff must manage each student’s needs and create a safe environment outside of school hours for students and staff.

Impact on Education funded six hours of Calming Kids professional development for BVSD School After Care educators to teach them strategies for managing student mental health needs and their own. The first sessions were held in 2021 thanks to a partnership with the City of Boulder’s Housing and Human Services Department, and additional sessions are planned for 2022.

Expanding BVSD’s team of mental health advocates

In the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD), referrals of students to Mental Health Advocates have risen by 86% this school year compared to the same period during the 2020-21 school year. 

Mental Health Advocates supplement what BVSD’s school counselors can provide since their focus is exclusively on mental and behavioral health. Within BVSD, Mental Health Advocates: 

• provide prevention and intervention services for students, supporting their social-emotional and behavioral development, student achievement, and crisis intervention
• provide both group and individual counseling support and work directly with students, parents, and staff members
• help families access external resources, including making appropriate referrals to community partners such as Mental Health Partners and Jewish Family Services

Impact on Education provided funding to hire four additional Mental Health Advocates to be deployed year-round in BVSD’s schools most impacted by the Marshall Fire. 

“We are seeing a significant increase when it comes to the social-emotional support our students need at this critical moment. Those impacted by the fire are working to process everything that happened. It was a deeply traumatic experience and it will take some time for these students to cope with the tremendous amount of loss and PTSD that everyone impacted by the fires are struggling through.”

Tammy Lawrence, Student Support Services Director

The additional support of four new Mental Health Advocates will ensure all of the schools impacted by the Marshall Fire have the intensive layer of mental health support needed, and expand BVSD’s capacity to respond to mental health referrals. 

The intensity of mental health concerns and the time required to provide support and intervention varies dramatically from case to case, but BVSD’s leadership is confident that adding these clinicians to the School District team was the most critical immediate step.

Funding to support mental health has come from our generous community partners

• Community Foundation Boulder County
• CDP Colorado Wildfires Recovery Fund
• AT&T
• United Healthcare
• Google
• City of Boulder Housing and Human Services Department

---

YOU CAN HELP …

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We are still actively raising funds to support the mental health needs of Boulder Valley students and staff. You can help by making a gift to support this work.

Helping BVSD students see all colors of the world

Students in the Boulder Valley School District deserve to know they belong, especially in school. One simple, yet powerful, way to achieve that is giving them art supplies that represent a range of skin tones. 

We are proud to partner with NAACP Boulder County to provide multicultural art supplies to BVSD classrooms so students can more accurately reflect themselves and others in their art and other work.

“All children deserve the ability to draw themselves in true form and that includes skin tone color. These art supplies make that vision become a reality which is priceless.”

Michelle Willingham
DEI Collab Group Leader, NAACP Boulder Chapter EDU Committee

Impact on Education funding will provide Crayola Colors of the World supply kits and workbooks to every elementary classroom in the next two weeks.

All of BVSD’s 31 elementary schools will receive Crayola Colors of the World art supplies and activity books for each of their classrooms. Each pack of crayons, markers and colored pencils contains 24 specifically-formulated colors representing people of the world. The subtle shades inside are formulated to better represent the growing diversity worldwide 

We’re also working to provide age-appropriate books to each classroom to promote healthy conversations around racial diversity and providing additional Crayola Colors of the World supplies to middle schools across the district in the fall.

BEFORE YOU GO

Impact on Education is an independent non-profit supporting the Boulder Valley School District. We depend on the generosity of our community to put our mission into action.

Will you help us provide opportunities and resources to local students?

Impact on Education is a nonprofit organization, and we depend on our community to help us put our mission into action. We support Boulder Valley public school students with community funding and resources in order to meet critical needs and eliminate opportunity gaps. Your support keeps us going strong and your donation will help us equalize opportunity, bolster academic success for local students.

How we’re funding opportunity for students across BVSD

One of the key ways we provide opportunity to high needs students in the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) is through our Academic Opportunity Fund. Our fourth and final funding round for the 2021-22 school year recently closed and we’re proud to share that we’re investing another $44,000 to meet the needs of BVSD students. This brings our total Academic Opportunity Fund investment to over $150,000 for the 2021-22 school year.

In Round Four, community volunteers helped evaluate 17 anonymized application requests and provide feedback on funding decisions. That data was then reviewed by Impact on Education (IOE) staff and final decisions were made.

• The average amount of funded requests was under $3,300, though requests ranged from $320 to $7,500.
• 14 projects will be funded directly by IOE, and we are working to meet some of the other needs through existing BVSD services.
• The funding will support twelve of BVSD’s elementary, middle and high schools. 

A variety of needs

From competition fees to tutoring programs, our Academic Opportunity Fund supported a variety of student and school needs including funding to:

• purchase guided reading bundles for elementary students
• fund tutoring sessions at multiple schools
• purchase Neuromaker Brain Computer Interface Kits for STEM learning
• provide professional development for trauma recovery
• help DECA members in financial need attend an international competition
• fund instrument repair and competition fees
• purchase graphic novels to help students with their reading comprehension
• expand a school-based tutoring program

Other ways we’re investing in student success 

The success of BVSD students sometimes requires more than our schools and teachers are able to provide during the day, and this is where we step in. With the help of our community, we can support students and families by providing equitable access to critical academic opportunities.

This summer, we’ll be working to help students in our Career Readiness Academy line up summer employment, preparing for an expanded early learning program for rising kindergarteners this summer, and kick off our annual Crayons to Calculators school supply distribution. Learn more about how we support Student Success.

Connect with Us