Almost 40 years ago, a Park City School District teacher wanted to send a couple of their students to a month-long space camp but didn’t have the needed district funding.
The efforts of Park City residents who pitched in made the students’ Stanford camp dream a reality.
“That is really how the foundation got its start,” Park City Education Foundation Vice President of Programs Kara Cody explained. “Some donors came together, and the rest is history.”
The program has grown substantially since its 1986 birth and its first $2,000 grant.
According to the nonprofit organization’s most recent publicly available tax documents, it received over $2.25 million in contributions and grants in 2020 and over $2.69 million in grants in 2021, a year it ended with more than $6.8 million in assets.
Despite its rising worth, its mission to “fund and support educator-powered initiatives that inspire all Park City students to reach their academic and lifelong potential” has remained largely the same.
On its website, the organization says it invested over $1.7 million in Park City students last year, impacting about 4,500 students and 280 educators.
Now, it’s accepting classroom grants from Park City School District teachers with ideas and initiatives that align with its mission and its values of partnership, classroom-centered, equitable and inclusive, Park City, nimble and unwavering.
While $258,000 in grant funding was given to 43 applicants last year, Cody said the foundation has yet to determine how much it will grant this year.
“The amount kind of varies each year. It depends on our revenue, what we’re able to fundraise,” she said. “We also support a range of programs, too, for our signature initiatives that are on a three-year cycle, so the classroom grants kind of vary.”
These signature initiatives — of which there are eight — include lowering the cost of preschool for families and ensuring a wide variety of programs for students and teachers.
Cody said that when granting classroom grants, the foundation looks for teachers with “innovative ideas and ways to solve challenges within the classroom.”
She said the process is competitive. There’s no guarantee applying teachers will receive their requested funds, and if they do there’s no guarantee they will receive everything they requested. The foundation’s website specifies the maximum amount a teacher can be awarded is $25,000.
“The #1 Indicator of Student Success is the Classroom Teacher,” the foundation’s website states on its classroom grant page. “If an educator has an idea on how to better help their students learn, PCEF grant funding can make the idea a reality.”
The applications, Cody explained, go through a committee of educators, community members and students.
“We really want to make sure that we have those that are impacted by the program involved in the process of selecting how and where we’re going to deploy our resources,” she said.
One program that was funded through a classroom grant is the school district’s RC League, which Cody said is a teacher-run, after-school program in Park City’s elementary schools.
“Students are paired up onto teams, and they build an RC car, and the students problem solve, build it themselves,” Cody said. “They’re given a budget, and they need to stay within that budget, so if they break their car, they’ve got to stay within a repair budget.”
Cody laughed, “It’s also kind of a good life lesson.”
Another initiative she said received its funding through the grant process is the district’s coffee cart program. The carts are run by students in speech therapy or special education programs who solicit coffee, tea or hot chocolate to teachers.
“It is a hands-on learning opportunity for them,” Cody said.
She explained the opportunity helps students with confidence and verbal skills.
“That was something that was started a number of years ago at an elementary school, and it is now spread to several other schools throughout the district,” she said.
Teachers who want a classroom grant must apply by April 1.