The Register Guard, September 5, 2009, Editorial
Good for the parents of students in Bethel schools. They’re forming a Bethel Education Foundation to solicit money and provide small grants for the schools. These private sources of help are all the more useful now that a recession is squeezing normal public funds.
In making this move the Bethel group is behind its two larger neighbors. Eugene formed an education foundation in 1993 and Springfield in 1994. But there’s no reason Bethel can’t catch up in its rate of success, however you choose to measure that.
Formation of a foundation to help the local public schools is not a novelty any more. There is, as you might expect, a National School Foundation Association, complete with real offices in Des Moines and a Web site.
According to that site, there are some 6,500 foundations assisting 14,500 school districts across the country. According to one expert, these foundations provide the three “ments.” That is, their purpose is to “augment, supplement and complement” programs and activities of the schools.
The national group traces its roots back to the establishment of the National Center for Public and Private School Foundations in Iowa in 2001.
Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley was the “driving force” behind this trend, a fact we will skip over quickly as Grassley is not popular with many because of his role in current Senate negotiations on health care reform.
In 2005, the center merged with the Association of Education Foundations to form what is now the NSFA.
None of that is terribly important to the Bethel folks, although they’ll probably want to be in touch with the national group and get whatever advice it offers.
The foundation focus will be strictly local. The current aim is to provide small grants to teachers, who will be invited to make proposals. That sounds sensible. And even if the money is not great at first it also sounds like something that will be appreciated by teachers. The implicit message of support may be as important as the dollars.