BVSD students are back to remote learning today, and Impact on Education is right here to help them. At the Nov 10th BVSD Board of Education meeting, BVSD Superintendent Dr. Anderson recommended all schools return to Phase 1, or all-remote learning, for the duration of the calendar year. This decision was based on Boulder County public health case numbers and the impact of current quarantines on school staffing. As we have since March, Impact on Education moved quickly to ensure we supported BVSD students and families as they navigate this return to remote learning. 

We have learned a lot since we launched our Critical Needs Fund back in March, but it’s clear that there are still large-scale district-wide needs. Our role is to address the many challenges of local students, including home internet access, adequate food, childcare, and supplemental instruction to ensure gaps in learning do not lead to more permanent deficits. 

IT Support for BVSD Students and Families

With more and more students learning from home, BVSD IT is challenged with making sure every single student has a reliable internet connection and functioning device. Impact on Education is supporting these efforts with funding to ensure all families have home internet. Now, we’ve turned our attention to making sure that the internet service is adequate in households with multiple kids at home. Impact on Education is partnering with BVSD IT, Boulder County and the City of Boulder to purchase and distribute over 500 additional hotspots for families! We’re also proud that our partnership has helped streamline a process for assisting students and families with connectivity and internet reliability issues. 

Emergency Food Distribution

When school buildings are closed, food becomes an immediate need, and we know that students can’t learn if they are hungry.  Since March, Impact on Education has been working in close partnership with the BVSD Food Services team to distribute food items and fresh produce to families every week. Families can access food on Mondays from 10:30 am – 1:30 pm at Columbine, Crestview, Emerald, Louisville Middle, Manhattan, Sanchez and Nederland Middle-Senior High. 

School Age Care Scholarships for BVSD Students

Starting today and for the month of December, BVSD will offer full-day drop-in School Age Care (SAC) at multiple schools. Impact on Education will continue to provide scholarships for families who need the all-day care. The enrollment process remains the same with families registering their students for SAC and applying for Childcare Assistance through the state. We work with Community Schools to evaluate the number of scholarships needed to supplement. We know that having paraeducators assist students in-person with online learning is a priority for some families, and we are proud to support the BVSD community with this aspect of Phase 1. 

Supplemental Instruction for BVSD Students

Schools are facing immediate student needs for individual academic support so Impact on Education created a Student Academic Support Fund that has already funded small group tutoring, software licenses to improve literacy instruction, Advanced Placement testing fees and much more. We are evaluating this program now and will decide during the month of December how to advance this program in the spring semester. 

We’re All Together with BVSD!

Wherever the learning occurs, Impact on Education will support students, families, and schools however we can. Whether the needs are district-wide, school-wide, or for individual students, we will continue to adapt our efforts to meet those needs.

Looking for other BVSD family resources? Click here.

Did you know that you’re part of BVSD’s support system? We couldn’t do what we do for local students without people like you behind us. If you’re looking for ways to give back this holiday season, we would be grateful if you included Impact on Education in your giving. Here are three ways you can brighten the holidays for local students.

Bid in our Virtual Auction

Bidding closes on Monday, November 30 in our virtual auction. Support public education and fine dining by placing a bid on top-rated wines from around the world and local fine dining and shopping experiences.

All proceeds from this event will go directly to BVSD students thanks to our generous sponsors: Premier Members Credit Union, Crestone Capital and Trailhead Wealth Management.

Donate Books for the Share-a-Gift Toy Shop

We’re collecting new and gently used children’s books for kids ages 0-14 in the Boulder Valley School District. The books collected will be part of the Share-a-Gift Holiday Toy Shop for local families.

Books will be collected November 30 through December 14. Gather books and deliver to one of our collection sites at your convenience. 

Give Where You Learn

Schedule your Colorado Gives Day gift and help us unlock a $20,000 matching gift from Google. Your gift will go a long way towards creating equitable change in Boulder Valley schools!

We have a long way to go to achieve equitable education in Boulder Valley. With people like you behind us, we can continue adapting, learning, and supporting the most critical needs of students in our community.

Our small but mighty team is thrilled to welcome Catherine Wessling as Impact on Education’s new Communications Director.

A hybrid professional, Catherine is a creative conductor working at the intersection of storytelling, design and project management. Working in communications since her early career, she honed her ability to both build and execute communications strategy while leading marketing for Haibike USA and building entrepreneurship programs at Leeds School of Business.

Catherine will drive Impact on Education’s annual communications strategy. She’s also responsible for our website, social media, and digital marketing.

Catherine grew up in Louisville, Colorado and is a BVSD alumna, having attended Louisville Middle School, Monarch K-8 and Monarch High School. When she’s not supporting educational equity in Boulder County, Catherine advocates for local history by volunteering with The Louisville History Foundation. She lives in her beloved hometown with her daughter and husband.

4 Fun Facts About Catherine

1. She was part of the first class to attend all four years at Monarch High School.
2. Her favorite font is Montserrat.
3. She’d rather indulge with black licorice than chocolate.
4. She has a chihuahua named Monkey.

“As a BVSD alumna and the mother of a three-year-old, I’m particularly interested in supporting our local education system,” Catherine shared. “But what truly drew me to Impact on Education is the ability to use my talents to help our local community close the achievement gap. Now, perhaps more than ever, the importance of local education is paramount.”

Catherine is getting to know us, and she’d love to hear from you. Reach out and introduce yourself!

BVSD is proud to announce that the annual Corden Pharma Science Fair will be held February 22, 2021 in an online, virtual format due to COVID-19, and judges are needed! This annual event invites middle and high school student researchers from across the district to showcase their extraordinary research projects and compete for prizes and a place in the Colorado State and International Science Fairs.

This year’s Science Fair judges will be using a software program to conduct project judging, and judges will interview students and evaluate them based on established project criteria. In terms of time commitment, the fair will take place between 8a and 4pm on February 22, 2021, and judges can choose among evaluating high school (Senior level) projects or middle school (Junior level) projects or even both. Judges usually evaluate about 3-5 projects within their area of expertise or interest and as part of a judging team. 

The Corden Pharma Science Fair stands out as a meaningful and rich opportunity for students to engage in all aspects of research, including data collection and analysis, as well as presentation of that research in various formats, including visualizations and video. Impact on Education is excited to support BVSD in reaching out to our community science experts and advocates to share their passion for science with our future leaders. Judges make this event possible!

Feel free to check out the Science Fair website for additional information, and if you would like to register, please complete the form here. You may also contact the Science Fair Coordinator, Kristin Donley kristin.donley@bvsd.org to help answer any questions you may have.

Yes, the Impact on Education Student Advisory Board is back in session, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome our largest SAB team ever! This year’s group comprises 16 BVSD students, passionate about “talking school” and eager to use their experiences and observations to make positive changes within both their schools and the school district in general. 

Excited for what’s to come

As we heard last night during our first meeting of the year, students are excited to “improve the educational system regarding inequality and inequity,” as one student put it, along with making the most of this great opportunity to “be a platform for minority students at Boulder High School,” as another responded to why she joined SAB. Other reasons for joining range from personal experiences with physically disabled students and wanting to expand those moments for other students to desires to make their schools that much more effective for their younger siblings. One student even boldly stated, “I want to have uncomfortable conversations because uncomfortable conversations are the most important ones to have.” Well, here we go!

For the first time since we started this program, the SAB members represent all four grade levels from freshman to senior, five of the BVSD high schools, and communities truly spanning the district from Nederland to Erie to Superior.  As we gather monthly, we will hear from students whose concerns range from the lack of equity in student opportunity and access to the addressing of sexual assault to classism to prioritizing a voice for underrepresented student groups, such as special education students and LGBTQ students. And we will see these student activists collaborate with each other and with us to drive their own efforts and to support BVSD in their striving to improve. 

A few needed changes

Changes made to the program this year include all remote meetings and a new leadership opportunity involving interviews with community leaders. We can’t wait to see how these students run with what we have planned and what they bring to the table! 

Welcome 2020-2021 Impact on Education Student Advisory Board!

It’s full steam ahead, with public health protocols in place, including masks and social distancing, for BVSD Reintroduction.

Based on last night’s special Board of Education meeting, by the end of October, all BVSD students will have the opportunity to attend school in-person at least one day a week or continue learning remotely. And although the place of learning may be different for each student, we’re continuing and even strengthening our partnership with Boulder Valley schools with supplemental funding with our Student Academic Support Fund.

Two months into the 2020-2021 school year and BVSD PK-2 students are now able to attend in-person, and just announced last night, grades 3-5, 6th, and 9th now have the opportunity to return in-person October 20th, with 7th-8th and 10th-12th having the option to return in-person October 27th. Elementary students will be able to attend four days a week with middle school students attending two days a week and high school students attending one day a week.

Families can also choose to continue remote learning and/or change their current in-person learning preference from in-person to remote/at-home or vice versa by logging in to their Infinite Campus account and making that change by October 13. Instructions for changing learning preferences can be found here, and it’s incredibly important that each student make the decision best for their own family. 

Just as BVSD students are finding their own groove in learning and either building on or starting new routines, starting this week, we are piloting a new funding opportunity for schools.

Student Academic Support Fund

School leadership can apply for funding every two weeks with decisions made four days after each application cycle ends. Specific student academic needs that can be addressed include tutoring, supplies, music instrument fees and repairs, class fees, software licenses and more. Volunteer community readers review the anonymous applications and make their recommendations to staff each cycle. We’re proud to be able to continue to provide supplemental funding to individual schools for individual and class student academic needs, whether students are learning within the school buildings or remotely. Even if the place where students learn changes, the needs are still there and likely will grow.

If the pandemic didn’t throw you for a loop last week, the snow definitely did. Snow in September? Really, 2020? Just as we were beginning to think we’ve seen it all this year. 

Things might feel upside down, but one thing is clear – whatever craziness comes our way, we’ll be here for the students in our community. We might be scratching our heads along the way, just like the rest of you, but we won’t skip a beat in ensuring our students’ needs are met.  

If we’ve learned anything, it’s that this is an evolving year. Our funding priorities and the ways we support students have had to shift and will continue to adjust to respond to the changing nature of school operations. We recognize that nothing is certain right now, and we are committed to making sure that our work at IoE continues to shift accordingly. 

That’s why we’re continuing to focus our efforts on meeting critical needs this year. Our Critical Needs Fund, established in March, will remain our primary focus this school year. We are committed to ensuring the following:

Connectivity

Pre-COVID, we knew that we had a digital divide in our community among those who had internet access at home and those who didn’t. Since the pandemic forced school buildings to close and a shift to remote learning, this divide has become a primary focus. Virtual learning requires steady, reliable internet access and computers. We are proud to say that, in partnership with BVSD IT, Impact on Education is ensuring that every student in BVSD has a computer and reliable home internet.  If you are a family in need of internet assistance, go to BVSD IT, reach out to the BVSD Help Desk or call 720-561-4357.

Food Security

Many students rely on school for breakfast, lunch, and weekend nutrition. That’s why, with our partners at BVSD Food Services, we’re ensuring that students and their families receive nutritious food while out of school. Hungry stomachs can’t learn, and we don’t expect them to.

Food is distributed every Monday from 9-11 A.M and 4-6 P.M at seven school locations across the District. For more info, check out the BVSD School Food Project website.

Student Academic Support

In order to adapt and respond to extraordinary student needs and circumstances and based on feedback from BVSD principals, we’re replacing our Opportunity Fund with a Student Academic Support Fund this year. We know that schools will learn about specific student needs as the year progresses, so we have created a new way to offer academic support on a rolling basis to those students facing financial hardship. We anticipate supporting students by covering the costs for class or elective fees, providing academic tutoring, and purchasing supplemental equipment, technology, or support. We are rolling this out on a pilot basis through December, when we will evaluate and make any program tweaks needed to continue meeting these needs in the spring of 2021. Requests must come from school principals or principal assistants, so students facing financial hardship should reach out to their school administration to request assistance. 

Student Engagement

In these trying times, we are also focusing our efforts on ensuring that students don’t fall behind and that they stay engaged in their classes. We committed to providing 5,000 hours of additional instructional time to support learners who may be falling behind. And we are working in partnership with Community Schools and BVSD’s student engagement team to be sure that every student stays engaged in their work this year. 

Additional Resources

While we are proud of the ways we are able to assist students and support our local schools, we know that students and families often have needs that stretch far beyond what the schools or our Foundation can do to assist. Fortunately, there are great resources available for those in need in our community. Whether you need resources yourself or you are trying to learn about resources available to help others, this list assembled by Ema Lyman, one of our fantastic Board members, offers comprehensive resources for those in need of housing assistance, employment services, transportation resources, medical assistance, crisis support, food, clothing and countless other emergency needs.    

Working together, we know that we will get through this pandemic. Current students are our future leaders, and their lives are being shaped by our community’s response to this crisis. With the support of an incredible community of donors and supporters, we are able to support these students in big and small ways each and every day. We hope that our collective efforts will inspire a new generation of problem solvers and creative thinkers who will lead us all to a brighter future. 

This week, rather than looking ahead to the cool classes and projects their students will be engaging and tackling this semester, many families are navigating the immediate challenge of internet access. Some families still need to acquire internet service or need help paying for it while others may not have adequate bandwidth to handle all of the video calls and online course curriculum required.

With that reality in mind, we are sharing information about how families can get internet access as well as some tips for maximizing your current service.

It will be nice once all students can simply focus on their learning instead of the internet service connecting them to school, but it is important to know that Impact on Education is committed to ensuring that all students have reliable internet access so that they can continue to learn even when that learning can’t happen in person.

Before changing providers or making other changes, consider these tips:

Going backward to go forward

It may seem counterintuitive to return to using ethernet to connect to the internet, but experts say ethernet is not only faster but also more reliable with no walls or distance to overcome. One way to put this idea into use is to plug an ethernet cable into your computer. Or, you can have one device in the house that typically uses Wifi use ethernet to free up the Wifi.

Location, location, location

All the sources on this topic claim that router location is the most important factor in Wifi reliability and capacity: The consensus place to put your router is high up, with fewer walls and appliances/furniture to go through, and close to the modem. Close to the ground, inside a closet, in the basement, under a desk are all places that inhibit the speed and reliability of something students and families will depend on more than ever this year! So, choose your router’s location carefully.

Time for an upgrade

If you’ve tried the above expert tips, and your internet is still sluggish, it may be time for an upgrade of either or both your router or your internet. The standard Wifi router that comes with your service that you may even be renting is likely not the most up to date, and upgrading it by purchasing a better one typically results in a faster speed.  That being said, a call to your provider, especially if you’ve had the same one for a while, about their latest speed options may result in a quick upgrade.

Still not connecting?

Families in financial need have a variety of options to receive free internet access. If you need assistance with this process or if you’ve tried the above and still aren’t able to log in, reach out to the BVSD Help Desk at it@bvsd.org or 720-561-4357, and they can offer additional assistance.

It’s almost the 2020-2021 School Year, and we’re gearing up to support BVSD students during what is sure to be the most challenging year any of us could imagine! 

As you’ve likely heard, BVSD now plans to begin in Phase One with all students learning remotely from their homes. We are continuing our partnership with BVSD Food Services to distribute emergency food twice a week throughout the district to ensure students have the nourishment they’ll need to learn. And we provided nearly 6,000 backpacks filled with school supplies through our Crayons to Calculators program earlier this week. Each student received necessary school supplies for their grade level, and we added supplies this year to facilitate students learning during a pandemic, such as headphones with microphones, hand sanitizer and cloth masks.

Looking ahead

On top of food and school supplies, Impact on Education plans to support student learning by providing every student in need with computers and home internet. We are also partnering with BVSD student advocates to encourage and motivate more student engagement and achievement at every grade level. Additionally, we are committed to supporting students when they have trouble. A robust plan for supplemental instruction is in the works that may include everything from online assessments, to virtual tutoring, to providing supplemental learning resources. 

We couldn’t do this work without a supportive community that understands the needs our students face. Thank you to everyone who has supported our efforts. If you are in a position to give, please consider supporting our students this year.

Last Thursday, we held our first-ever virtual event: Together We Bloom. Thanks to our staff, a dedicated committee, and some great volunteers, we were able to execute an exciting virtual celebration. Although we couldn’t be in person, it truly felt like the community came together that night, and we’re so grateful to everyone who joined us.

Thanks to you, we were able to raise nearly $240,000 in support of BVSD students!

We were inspired to see the community unite in such a huge way, sharing our commitment to ensuring that as this new school year unfolds, every student is fully equipped and prepared to learn, whether in school buildings or from home.

That community support extended into the event itself. All of our musical performances and demonstrations for the evening had a connection to the community. Whether alum, parents, or residents, each is proud to support BVSD, and this support expanded across our silent auction items—each donated by members of the community, supporting local businesses. It was motivating to see everyone come together in a meaningful way.

Highlights from the evening

From Face Vocal Band and Hazel Miller, to Ultalowfi and Gasoline Lollipops, we heard from many attendees that they just might have found a new favorite band. And we can’t forget, Colorado Springs-grown OneRepublic closing out the night! 

Along the way we had a delicious pasta demo and even a tasty drink demo you could follow along with at home if you had purchased the mixology add-on package. Executive Director Allison Billings and our amazing emcee, John Tayer, President and CEO of the Boulder Chamber, shared a bit about what we’ve been up to at IoE and why our work is more crucial now than ever. We shared a video to further clarify how the COVID crisis has affected our community specifically and the action IoE has taken to help alleviate the burden on our most impacted families.

Your contribution to our work is what makes it all possible. Whether donating, spreading the word to friends and family, or just taking the time to learn more about us, we can’t thank you enough for your support. As the event theme, Together We Bloom, suggests–when we work together and support one another, our community emerges even stronger! Although this school year will be unlike any other we’ve seen, we’ll get through it together.

Connect with Us