Schools foundation distributes $54,000

The Sisters Schools Foundation has approved distributions totaling $54,066 for 2005-06. The money will support projects and activities outlined in 39 individual requests from the district’s three schools.

The schools made 55 requests for a total of $123,502.

As in the past, most of the money for this fall’s distribution was raised in Starry Nights concerts in the spring. The format shifted to two concerts instead of three this year and the concerts (John Hiatt and David Jacobs-Strain in March, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in April) produced about $76,000 for the foundation. This pushed the organization over the $500,000 mark for Starry Nights money raised during the eight years of the Foundation’s existence.

The Foundation supports music, sports, art, technology “and other classroom and co-curricular purposes and activities,” according to its Web site.

Rod Morris, a Foundation board member and former chairman, explained that the board looks at several criteria and follows several principles in deciding which requests should be funded. For example, the group does not give money for salaries “at all.” It also bypasses projects that are likely to find support from other sources. And it favors projects that benefit larger rather than smaller numbers of students.

A quarter of the earnings from Starry Nights goes into the Foundation’s endowment and another $6,000 this year was held back for general expenses plus $4,000 for an audit.

This year’s distributions will fund 17 of 21 requests from the elementary school totaling $20,520, 11 of 18 requests from the middle school totaling $15,400, and 11 of 16 requests from the high school totaling $18,146.

The largest request approved for the elementary school, $6,695, will pay for a mobile classroom set of desktop processors that enable students to do self-instruction in keyboarding and word processing.

The biggest grant at the middle school, $6,900 will buy refurbished computers to get the school’s obsolete media lab back up to snuff. The high school will use its largest check, $5,000, for the athletics program.

The smallest item approved overall was $120 to buy the materials needed to start a lunchtime chess program at the elementary school.