The past several years has seen a decrease in the amount of per student funding given from the state to schools.  As a charter school, Freedom Academy receives less funding from the state than a public school.  As a result, budgets have been extremely tight, teachers have not received raises, benefits have been cut and specialty classes have been cut. Yet through it all, our children continue to receive a high quality education thanks to the dedication of teachers and administrators.

Because of the funding challenges, and because we want to help continue the tradition of an excellent education at Freedom Academy, a group of parents, with the blessing of the Governing Board, has formed a Fundraising Committee.  The stated goal is to raise $100,000 by the beginning of the next school year to facilitate the return of specialty classes.

In tackling this aggressive goal, the group divided into two sub-committees:

• Corporate/Endowment-level donations
• School/Community-level donations.

The Corporate group, and the overall committee is headed by Robert Merrill.  This corporate group will focus on creating a stream of sustainable funding through corporate and large private donations that will continue year after year.

The School Level committee is headed by Karla Kay Snow and Trent Schoonmaker.  This sub-committee will focus on smaller fundraisers at the school level.  Each fundraiser will be approved through the central office.  One of the criteria for a fundraiser is will it provide value, and does it have a specific goal.  The idea is not to bombard the parent community with fundraisers, but to find things that may provide value to the families if they participate.  No family should ever participate in a fundraising activity because of a feeling of guilt.  With an increase in fundraising activities, there may be activities that just don’t fit in with a families budget, or they may not see good value in that particular activity.  This is not a problem.  The current focuses of the School Level committee are:

1. Holiday CD sale fundraiser, please see information that went home in the communication folder last week
2. A new free dress day.  Each Student or teacher can pay $1 to have a day when they can wear anything (appropriate and within reason of course).  This is not another school t-shirt and jean day.  This is a free dress day.
3. As Christmas approaches an opportunity if Grandparents or others for Christmas gifts would like to donate to the school in behalf of their grandchildren.  Also in lieu of teacher gifts, the opportunity for parents to show their appreciation by taking that money and donating it to the teacher’s classroom.
4. Reminding everyone that if you need to make a charitable donation by the end of the year for tax purposes, Freedom Academy is a great choice of a non-profit organization to make that donation to.

Please look for official communications by email and at www.pfa.cc/fundraising