Congratulations to our 2019 Community Builder Schools!

There are many incredible endeavors happening in support of local students. As part of the 2019 OnPoint Prize campaign, we are pleased to recognize five schools as Community Builder award recipients.

Congratulations to Bridger Elementary School for being selected by community votes as our $2,000 school winner.

Bridger Elementary School

District: Portland Public Schools | Program / Event Name: Bridger Scholars Program

The Bridger Scholars program awards students who achieve Cs or higher in all classes with sweatshirts and t-shirts. Through the program, teachers also support students who have not yet met the requirement by breaking them into mentor groups and meeting with students individually to support their academic and social/emotional needs. The Bridger Scholars program would like to start providing snacks for all participants as we believe the school community cannot be transformed without ensuring that the students’ basic needs are met. The program works to promotes academic success through mentoring, recognition, and providing needed supports to facilitate learning with the goal of shifting school climate toward academic success.

The $1,000 Community Builder Award Winners

Molalla High School

District: Molalla River School District | Program / Event Name: Friendship Courtyard

Molalla High School would like to redesign our interior courtyard/patio into a Friendship Courtyard. This will be a beautiful and pleasant space that will include explicit branding as an inclusive, conflict-free, peaceful refuge for all. The building and designing of this space will be achieved through co-curricular collaboration, with many different student groups and classes participating. This will include buying materials for our woods students to build patio tables, chairs and/or covered structures, plants for our horticulture students to plant to increase the visual beauty of the area, and having our graphic arts and industrial arts students design and install an updated lighting scheme. We will also buy supplies to give to our art and/or metals classes to create signage that displays themes of inclusiveness, kindness, and community. Our student senate will be responsible for advertising the purpose of the project to the school community, and creating an ‘opening ceremony’ to introduce the final project to the school. The student senate will then be tasked with the responsibility for ongoing education of students and staff to utilize the area according to its designated purpose, including planning and carrying out activities in the space that promote inclusiveness and kindness.

Prescott Elementary School

District: Parkrose School District | Program / Event Name: SUN School Homework Tutors

Prescott Elementary School’s after school SUN (Schools Uniting Neighborhoods) program in collaboration with SEI (Self Enhancement, Inc.) believes their main goal is guiding underserved youth to realize their full potential. It is in the spirit of this mission that we seek these support funds to introduce certified teaching aides to our SUN school program. The goal of this would be to assist in homework help in a manner consistent with classroom learning techniques. This new addition would truly embody the educational support and skill development that the SUN program represents. We feel that this tutoring opportunity will provide hope to individual students and enhance the quality of community life.

Tucker Maxon School

District: Portland, OR | Program / Event Name: Special Needs Projector/Sound System

Children who are deaf struggle academically. On average nationally, children who are deaf graduate high school with a third grade reading ability (AG Bell Association). To help them succeed academically, deaf children need additional services to help them develop their listening and spoken language skills. Tucker Maxon School would like to purchase specialized equipment so that our deaf and hard of hearing students can hear in our new STEM lab. Unfortunately, because of outdated equipment, our deaf and hard of hearing students are currently unable to access wireless audio in those spaces. We need to invest in new equipment so that all of our students can benefit from the new STEM lab and gym. In classrooms, deaf students benefit from wireless technology which allows teachers to transmit their voice directly into an FM receiver on the student’s hearing equipment (either cochlear implant or digital hearing aid) from a microphone worn around the teacher’s neck. With this grant, we plan to purchase the specialized audiological equipment that allows the new sound systems in the STEM lab and the gym to connect to the FM/Soundfield system so students who are deaf and hard of hearing can access sound in all of our spaces, including during science, music and art instruction, as well as school assemblies and performances.

Vose Elementary School

District: Beaverton School District | Program / Event Name: Ballet Folklorico After School Club

Vose Elementary is a Title 1 school who serves around 75% students from a Hispanic background. The school also offers an English-Spanish dual-language program where learners have the opportunity to experience both language and become bilingual, biliterate and bicultural. To improve students’ interactions with culture, the school would like to offer a ballet folklorico after-school club for 2nd and 3rd graders. The short-term goals of the program are to improve students’ identity, increasing their sense of belonging, as well as foster community engagement bridging the gap between Hispanics and non-Hispanic community members. Students are also expected to become more culturally aware and embrace the Hispanic culture and traditions through dance.

About the OnPoint Community Builder Awards

The goal of the Community Builder award is to provide funding for schools to complete a project that is enriching to the school, students and faculty. In considering which applications will be selected as finalists, the following criteria were considered:

Creativity and Community

Will the project inspire creativity and foster community?

Broad Segment

Will the project reach a broad segment of the school community?

Matching Cost

Can the project be completed with the $1,000 or $2,000 Community Builder award, and if not what is the plan to raise any outstanding funds needed?

Who Is Eligible?

OnPoint accepts project applications for the Community Builder Awards from public, private or charter K-12 schools in the counties of Benton, Clackamas, Columbia, Crook, Deschutes, Jefferson, Lane, Linn, Marion, Multnomah, Polk, Washington and Yamhill counties in Oregon, and Clark and Skamania counties in Washington.

Who can join OnPoint_regional graphic map of approximate charter area

Our 2019 Educators of the Year have been announced. Please check back in February 2020 for more information about next year’s campaign or you can sign up for email updates!