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.

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.

Dyslexia is a neurobiological learning disability characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often not in relation to other cognitive abilities; however, many students are mistakenly told they just need to work harder or get more general help (International Dyslexia Association, 2002). 

This scenario mirrors that of Kate Snedeker, a former BVSD student who couldn’t keep up the pace of curriculum in elementary school when reading became more the focus, and teacher conferences and report cards led to demoralization, despite understanding the material. 

One family’s perspective

When she was in sixth grade, her mother, Kristen, learned about dyslexia and saw some similarities in Kate’s experience; the diagnosis of “debilitating dyslexia” should have led to relief but instead emphasized how the lack of early intervention had now created a situation of playing catch up using time-consuming compensating strategies and 504 accommodations. 

Driven to prevent as much as possible the same situation for any other BVSD student, Kristen approached Impact on Education in 2019 with the idea of partnering to support students with dyslexia using early detection and intervention. Together with BVKID (Boulder Valley Kids Identified with Dyslexia) and BVSD, we concluded that the most effective way to address the need to help these students focused on teacher training in the Orton-Gillingham approach, a multisensory, explicit, sequential and diagnostic method of teaching literacy to dyslexic students.  We just needed funding.

So, Impact on Education created the Literacy Fund in late 2019, and with the help of the Boulder Valley community, we raised $50,000 to provide summer Orton-Gillingham training for 41 BVSD teachers and reading interventionists, enough to guarantee that every single school in BVSD can identify and support students with dyslexia, and no child should have to be told to just work harder, as Kate was told.

Taking place this week, the Zoom training mirrors the in-person training in its introduction of a concept via main meeting, demonstration of the concept, breaking of participants into small break-out groups, and interactive chat sessions. And with the distribution of all the materials, interventionists and teachers can use this approach with students as soon as the first week of school! 

Advocating for others

Now an advocate for younger students with dyslexia and college senior exploring a career in social justice, Kate is “happy to know that [my] own challenges helped to inspire a program at BVSD that may make lifelong differences in the lives of other students.” And this all started because Kristen, whose brother Blake Peterson served as a Board member, realized that our mission in working to overcome or eliminate barriers to success for all students might make this a program we would embrace. 

Kristen was right! Impact on Education exists to address critical needs and achievement gaps for all students in Boulder Valley’s public schools. With the Orton-Gillingham training that we are offering this week, we are proudly making big strides towards addressing the specific needs and overcoming the learning gaps for every BVSD student, including those with dyslexia. As the BVSD Director of Reading, Michelle Qazi shares, “Not only will learning the Orton-Gillingham approach help crack the code for those who have gaps in learning to read, but it is great teaching for all students at the universal level.” 

Our longstanding Crayons to Calculators program, generously supported by Western Disposal, needs your help to ensure that 11,000 Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley students pre-K through 12th grade start school in August well-equipped for success! This year, maybe more than any other, students will need our assistance, and Crayons to Calculators is ready for the challenge: 

In order to align with Boulder County Public Health guidelines, we are securing and pre-packaging all of the needed supplies recommended by BVSD and SVVSD, through a wholesale supplier and delivering them directly to the school districts for distribution to students in need. This program adaptation will serve as a safety measure while still fulfilling the need for every single student to return to learning in August feeling prepared and confident. 

What does this mean for community participation? It means we need community members, who share our commitment to education for all students, to make a gift on behalf of this imperative program. Since we are unable to incorporate two typical elements of this program, volunteer assistance and donated supplies, in 2020, we need to raise more funds from individuals and businesses.

This year, we’re excited to share that our friends at Google have pledged to match all donations made by June 30th up to $10,000. Crayons to Calculators has never depended more on community, individual, and corporate donations. Will you help us raise $20,000 for school supplies by then? 

So, as we head into the heat of summer, we know that with your help, Crayons to Calculators and its title sponsor Western Disposal along with partners Impact on Education and Education Foundation for the St. Vrain Valley will be able to meet students’ needs and help them start the school year ready to set new and higher goals! 

Donate here

Sponsorship opportunities are still available. Please reach out to darcy@impactoneducation.org if your business is interested in supporting this essential program or sharing information on our behalf. 

300,000 meals for BVSD families! Yes, you read that right! Because of generous individuals and businesses in our community, Impact on Education’s Critical Needs Fund was able to support BVSD Food Services in providing over 300,000 meals since mid-March when school doors suddenly closed, cutting off access to the 6,500 students who rely on free or reduced cost breakfast and lunch each day.  Food bags were distributed in a safe, drive-through manner at various school sites and reflected the consistently high standards of Chef Ann, Director of Food Services, which means high quality, local, organic when available, fresh produce, protein, and whole grains.

On Tuesday June 9th, our Executive Director Allison Billings presented this $100,000 check to BVSD Food Services Operations Manager & Registered Dietician, Stephen Menyhart, and we couldn’t be more grateful for such dedicated partners in keeping our BVSD students and families ready to learn and feeling connected to one another during this uncertain time. This investment was complemented by the $40,000 in grocery gift cards that Impact on Education provided to families in need between March and May to ensure that their basic needs were met. 

Food distribution details

When: 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays, through Aug. 6 (no distribution July 2)

Where: Sanchez Elementary, 655 Sir Galahad Drive, Lafayette; Crest View Elementary, 1897 Sumac Drive, Boulder; Columbine Elementary, 3130 Repplier Drive, Boulder; Emerald Elementary, 275 Emerald St., Broomfield; Louisville Middle, 1341 Main St., Louisville; Nederland Middle/Senior, 597 County Road 130, Nederland; and University Hill Elementary (site may change in mid-July due to construction), 956 16th St., Boulder.

For more info on food distribution, check out the School Food Project.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks to you, we are closing in on our Critical Needs Fund goal of $500,000. So far, Impact on Education and our entire community have raised nearly $470,000 from almost 750 donors. And both of those totals are growing because our impact continues to grow.

We’re continuing to partner with BVSD Food Services to distribute bags of fresh, local food to families at seven different school sites across the district twice a week, and that food distribution will continue into July.

We’re also providing grocery gift cards to families in need to supplement the meal bags from BVSD Food Services, and to date, school community liaisons have distributed over $40,000 in gift cards.

We’re so proud that BVSD has ensured internet access and devices to all BVSD families, and we’re now looking into how we can support the district in their professional development offered, so that all teachers are prepared and have the tools they need to support learning in the fall, whether that happens in person, remotely or in a blended format.

Finally, we know that our Critical Needs Fund will also address BVSD students’ significant academic gap as we move into the fall to ensure this temporary gap in in-person learning doesn’t translate to a longer-term overall knowledge and skill gap.

This “new normal”

More students will likely need interventions in some form and more continual food assistance; this situation is ever evolving and much is uncertain. Some needs can be foreseen and many cannot. Our Critical Needs Fund was established as support for both now and the future. And as the needs and our efforts grow, our community has stood with us, and we cannot thank you enough.

So, whether you’re someone in need of help or someone who can provide help, Impact on Education is here for you. We are committed to meeting the needs of the students and families in Boulder Valley’s public schools now and well after the COVID-19 crisis has ended.

Make a gift to the Critical Needs Fund.

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