OUR 2009-2010 FOCUS ON GRANT WRITING

With the current economic situation placing our education budgets in jeopardy, the Natomas Schools Foundation is committed to bringing as much financial support to our schools as possible. We are focused on writing more grants and fostering more partnerships that enable us to enrich our students' educational experience here in Natomas.

The list of benefits that students derive from mentoring continues to grow and touch the lives of students and community members alike.  Their one-on-one support of the students makes this program the success that it has become. We continue to support programs that involve mentoring with our students.

This is a new program where the foundation is providing standards-based, flute-like recorders to all 3rd grade students in every elementary school in our district. This will help students learn how to read music and inspire them to try a musical instrument in 4th and 5th grades, which the foundation hopes to provide. We also want to help finance our current music programs, with instrument repairs, new instruments, and music books. This program kicked off on September 28th, 2008, with a FREE full symphony concert, from the Camellia Symphony Orchestra, at Natomas High School. We will be encouraging all parents from our schools to attend this very special concert, and Musical Petting Zoo where students will get a hands-on introduction to a variety of musical instruments..

Our new donation program is an easy, simple, and direct way to help our schools, teachers, and students. You donate directly to our CLASSROOMS, through our web site.  Just visit our website and click on DONATE TO EDUCATE. Take a few minutes to read and review the letters from our schools. These are written requests directly from our classrooms, schools, clubs, and school organizations. Small or large, we post them on our web site for the community to be able reach out and give a helping hand to these requests, needs, and wish list items. There will be a variety of needs and you pick those that appeal to you. These items will help enrich our students’ classrooms. We all know with budget cuts and the lack of funds our schools are losing their resources. This was one of our ways to help connect YOU to our schools, and help our students become the best they can be in our community.  This is EASY, SIMPLE and DIRECT!.

With a grant from the Sacramento River Cats, we are sponsoring a Science and Engineering Fair to foster a spirit of innovation among students and educators. This event is open to ALL students in the Natomas Unified School District.

The Science Fair process yields mature, self-confident, skilled and competitive young leaders with career goals AND the preparation,discipline and drive to attain them. The Science Fair will be held at H. Allen Hight Learning Center on Thursday, March 12th and the Natomas Schools Foundation will continue beyond that date to raise money to purchase additional science equipment for all our district schools.

The Natomas Schools Foundation is sponsoring the “Every 15 Minutes” program at our local high schools.  This emotionally charged program is an event designed to dramatically instill teenagers with the potentially dangerous consequences of drinking, driving and alcohol-related accidents.  In the past, Inderkum and Natomas High Schools have had to heavily fundraise to pay the $20,000 program fee, so this takes a big burden off the high schools and provides an even BIGGER benefit to our students! This year's event will be held in May 2009 at Natomas High School.