Impact on Education welcomes four new board members

Our Board of Directors plays an important role in our work to empower students, engage the community and help the Boulder Valley School District evolve. Our nominating committee led an effort to identify areas where the Board needed to grow, and to support this work and further our mission, we’re bringing four new community members onto our Board this month.

We’re so excited to welcome the individuals below who will each bring unique talents and perspectives to our work. We would also like to share a heartfelt thank you to Samara Williams, Principal at Emerald Elementary, whose term just ended after serving on our Board since 2016.

Jennifer Sterling 

Managing Director, Partner at Sterling-Rice Group (SRG)

Jann Oldham

Semi-Retired, Consultant at Community by Design 

Cathleen Kendall

Attorney and volunteer

Tanya Santee

Principal, Birch Elementary (Broomfield)

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.

Shane Co: A local jeweler dedicated to education

Many of you know the iconic radio commercials, but did you know that Shane Co. has strong Colorado roots and a passion for education? Our partnership is built on shared values and a desire to support our local communities.

A devastated community leads to a new partnership

With two retail stores in Colorado and both Tom and Rordan Shane as alumni of the University of Colorado Boulder, the Boulder area has special meaning to the Shane Co. family. When the Marshall Fire devastated the Louisville and Superior communities, they reached out to see how they could help support students, staff and their families impacted by the fire. With their dedication to giving back to local schools and students in need, our organization values are strongly aligned with Shane Co.’s philanthropic values, and they made a gift to support our Marshall Fire response.

Being able to support communities at the local level is important to Shane Co. and a leading factor of why they see education as common ground for giving back. They also believe that by providing equal opportunities to all students will allow them to have a part, no matter how small it may be, in the fight for equitable learning. 

Why education is important to Shane Co.

Over the last several years, Shane Co. has been committed to supporting underserved kids and under-resourced schools in our local communities through the Kids-In-Need Foundation. Supporting education and equitable learning reflects the strong core values and family focus that is the foundation for the success of Shane Co., a fourth-generation company. 

Shane Co. believes the fight against racial injustice starts with education. 

Their regional partnerships with Kids In Need Foundation further aims to create equitable learning environments by supporting schools where the demographic is primarily composed of students who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. 

Similarly, Impact on Education is committed to equalizing opportunity in education across racial and socioeconomic lines. We understand how important education is in determining a child’s future, and we work every day to ensure all Boulder Valley students have a bright path forward.

A little more about Shane Co.

Since 1929, and for four generations, the Shane family has been dedicated to helping their customers with their biggest life moments: proposals, anniversaries, graduations, birthdays, and more. Tom Shane and his son, Rordan Shane, are carrying on their family’s legacy as your trusted jeweler and friend in the jewelry business. Shane Co. has deep roots in Colorado, with Shane Co. stores in the Front range area for over 50 years, and Tom and Rordan Shane both graduating from the University of Colorado Boulder.

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.

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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.

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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

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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.

We’re challenging the BVSD community to raise $25,000 for back-to-school supplies

We work all year to provide opportunities for BVSD students, but an important first step is ensuring every student starts the school year with the supplies they need for a strong and successful academic year.

89% of parents & guardians expect rising prices to impact their back-to-school shopping plans.

Numerator

Especially right now as inflation hits its highest level in four decades, times are tight for families and we know that many will struggle with back-to-school expenses for their children this fall. Our community is also seeing the harsh reality of the Marshall Fire affecting local families who have a greater need for financial support than they have during previous school years.

Why school supplies are so important

In addition to families affected by the fire, there are over 8,000 local students living in or near poverty who often go without essential school supplies. When families face difficult financial decisions or tradeoffs, such as buying groceries or school supplies, it can impact a student’s success in the classroom and in life. Ensuring every student has access to school supplies creates equitable classrooms across all grade-levels.

To a student in need, a backpack filled with school supplies is so much more than a backpack; it’s a powerful toolbox that bolsters self-esteem and unleashes confidence.

How we provide school supplies to students in need

Our annual school supply distribution, Crayons to Calculators, provides age-appropriate school supplies, headphones, and a new backpack to over 8,000 students facing financial hardship in the Boulder Valley School District and the St. Vrain Valley School District.

In partnership with the St. Vrain Valley Schools Education Foundation, our Title Sponsor Western Disposal Services, and our other generous sponsors, we fund this $250,000 program to ensure each student will head back to school with the tools they need to succeed.

Our challenge to the community

The Crayons to Calculators Community Challenge encourages individuals and organizations to host mini-fundraising campaigns to raise $25,000, or 10% of the total program cost.

The challenge is a fun way to bring organizations and networks together in support of a common goal: supporting local students and equitable classrooms. The challenge lasts for four weeks, and we provide resources and tips for fun activities that encourage individual and team participation.

Expanding early learning for incoming BVSD Kindergarteners

We want to prepare as many children as we can for that all-important first year of formal schooling. From academic knowledge and skills to executive functioning and social emotional learning, high quality early learning experiences are critical to their future success.

Our Kinder Bridge investment

Impact on Education partners with the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) to fund Kinder Bridge, providing summer learning for over 160 rising Kindergarten students. Access to early learning, including reading and math, is not equitably available to all children who will enroll in the district, so we invest in this program to provide access to those historically underserved.

School readiness can significantly impact everything from reading at grade level to graduating high school to being career ready later in life.

Center for American Progress

Working with BVSD and community partners we identify the students most likely to be in need of programming to prepare them for the classroom. 

What students learn

At three schools across the district, students receive six weeks of summer instruction focusing on letter recognition, counting, letter sound formation and recognition, and name-writing. They also cultivate executive functioning and social emotional learning skills which are important for kindergarten readiness.

Learn more about BVSD’s summer learning program >>

The importance of early learning

We invest in Kinder Bridge and our partnership with BVSD because our schools are well-positioned to provide young children and their families with high quality early learning experiences. We’ll work closely with BVSD to evaluate the progress students make during this summer’s program as they prepare for their classrooms this fall.

Announcing our 2022 college scholarship awardees

We’re excited to share that we’ve awarded $40,000 in scholarships to seven graduating high school seniors in BVSD. Applications were reviewed by a group of trained community volunteers, and student winners were selected based upon their academic achievement, financial need, and other eligibility requirements.

“This year we saw a deep field of scholarship applicants filled with students on their way to doing great things. We’re grateful to our scholarship review team for taking the time to learn about each applicant and make some tough decisions. Each applicant embodied a student empowered to soar and we’re proud to support our awardees as they take the next steps on their education journey.”

—Matt Tebo, IOE Program Manager

Our newest Earl & Barbara Bolton Scholarship, is awarded from a $500,000 endowment left to Impact on Education by its namesake. The couple grew up in Boulder County, attended Boulder Valley public schools, and were well known in the community for their love of aviation, history, education, and travel. The scholarship is intended for students planning to study engineering, forestry, nursing, or medicine in the state of Colorado.

Earl & Barbara Bolton Scholarship

The $5,000 Earl & Barbara Bolton Scholarship was awarded to Nia Sorel, a senior at Monarch High School. Nia plans to major in Integrative Physiology and Kinesiology at CU-Boulder beginning in the fall. This scholarship award is renewable for up to four years, with the potential to fund $20,000 of Nia’s college expenses.

“My fascination with biology and medicine stemmed, evoking a curiosity about what it would take to be a doctor. As my educational career continues, I crave a deeper understanding of medicine-based sciences; to interpret the human body and the effects of medical intervention.”

—Nia Sorel, 2022 Earl & Barbara Bolton Scholarship Winner

Dennie & Donna Wise Scholarship

One of Impact on Education’s longtime scholarships, the Dennie and Donna Wise Scholarship, was endowed by a former board member to support up to two students a year planning to pursue a vocational, technical, or community college education. 

A $1,000 scholarship was awarded to Jaime Ibarra, a senior at Boulder High School and to Julian Mastrine, a senior at Monarch High School. Jamie plans to attend Front Range Community College in the fall to pursue her interests in psychology and nursing, and Julian plans to study Automotive Service Management at Lincoln Tech in Denver. This scholarship award is renewable for up to two years, funding up to $2,000 of each recipient’s tuition. 

“I always want to make sure my people, and others are safe, that their mental and physical health is doing okay. I am bilingual and I can make a difference with the latino community with being able to translate and attend to Spanish speaking patients.”

—Jaime Ibarra, 2022 Dennie & Donna Wise Scholarship Winner

“I’m a young mechanic who loves a trade that’s dying. If we, as a new generation of mechanics, were able to change the whole idea around how a shop functions, then it could be a whole lot better.”

—Julian Mastrine, 2022 Dennie & Donna Wise Scholarship Winner

Additional scholarship recipients

Independent Order of Odd Fellows  – Boulder Lodge #9 Scholarship
Impact on Education administers a scholarship for the Odd Fellows Boulder Lodge #9. They are a long-established part of the Boulder community and wish to reward and assist graduating seniors in the Boulder Valley School District who demonstrate a strong commitment to their community and personal excellence. Each scholarship is renewable for up to five years, funding up to $5,000 per recipient.

This year’s awardees were Jessica Funk from Monarch High School, Gabriela Borlovan from Centaurus High School, and Amairani Chirinos from New Vista High School.

Panther Pride Excellence in Leadership
An additional award we administer, the $1,000 Panther Pride Excellence in Leadership, was awarded to Madelyn Hardee from Boulder High School.

We offer these scholarships to support Boulder Valley students in financial need who wish to pursue higher education. We’re able to provide this type of important financial support thanks to generous bequests left to the organization from local community members. If you’d like to discuss opportunities for planned giving, including bequests, gifts from a retirement account, charitable trust, or real estate, please contact darcy@impactoneducation.org.

Anahi Quintana receives Imogene Maxon Early Educator Award

The Imogene “Jean” Maxon Early Educator Award is awarded to a BVSD educator with up to three years of classroom experience who demonstrates the drive, stamina, and vision of a career educator.

We recognized four finalists for this year’s award at the 29th Annual Impact Awards on May 23, including:

• Henry Huettel, a first grade teacher at Kohl Elementary
• Kayleigh Esswein, an English and humanities teacher at Peak to Peak High School
• Anahi Quintana, a 6th grade ELA teacher at Broomfield Heights Middle, and
• Sophia Real, a first and second grade teacher at Columbine Elementary

Congratulations to Anahi Quintana

Dr. Lora de la Cruz, BVSD Deputy Superintendent, announced the 2022 Imogene Maxon Early Educator Award winner, Anahi Quintana. Her colleagues told us:

“Anahi works beyond the walls of her classroom to reach parents and community members and has an “all together now” approach to student success.”

About Imogene Maxon

Imogene Maxon was a lifelong educator who taught with the Boulder Valley School District. In 2020 we received a bequest from her estate and created the Imogene “Jean” Maxon Early Educator Award in her honor. Imogene believed strongly in the impact of teachers who spend a lifetime honing instruction and learning practices and positively impacting countless students within the classroom.

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