Even a pandemic, closed schools and staff working from their homes wasn’t going to stop the Waukesha Education Foundation, Inc. from surprising this year’s grant recipients. 

Throughout the year, the Waukesha Education Foundation, Inc. (WEF) raises funds through community events to be awarded as annual grants. Each spring, teachers and staff throughout the School District of Waukesha may submit grant proposals to the foundation, requesting support for unique teaching opportunities or innovative programs that normally wouldn’t be funded by the school district. 

This year, with the current world health crisis, the foundation was unsure if teachers would even have the time or capacity to put together collaborative grant proposals. But as usual, staff in the Waukesha School District did not disappoint. Although the number of applicants decreased greatly, the quality of the applications did not. The WEF was able to award 30 grants, totaling just under $36,000. A group of volunteers from the foundation’s board set out to deliver socially distanced grant notifications with novelty checks, prizes, and good news on Wednesday, and hosted a virtual celebration online Wednesday evening. 

“Our Foundation team really came together during a very challenging time. Our grant team had to review and virtually discuss each application, and then come up with a notification plan. We had to reach out to all of our applicants to ask how they wanted to be notified of our decision, as we wanted to respect their privacy and their time. Then, we had to pull a plan together to get these items delivered to places all over the metro area and then figure out a way to bring everyone together virtually to formally announce the winners.  We work really hard year round, and this, by far, is our favorite day of the year. Even COVID-19 was not going to stop us from celebrating these great educators,” said Lynnette Kalmadge, Executive Director of the Waukesha Education Foundation. “I am so appreciative of our entire team for helping to make this happen. It’s a lot of work, but it’s so worth it when you see the winners’ excitement.” 

“We work within our community to raise dollars to fund our endowment. We do this by holding special events such as our August 4  Golf Outing and our Evening for Education that is currently scheduled for October 29. We rely on business and community support alike through a variety of sponsorship opportunities, donation opportunities, partnerships and generous individual donors. Without this support, we could not fund these awesome programs,” said Kalmadge. 

Grants awarded this year included a variety of great projects: funding for the District’s FeMade program, interactive displays at the Horwitz-DeRemer Planetarium, a variety of supplemental tools for social-emotional learning, a variety of business and coding simulation software programs, a community service club at Meadowbrook Elementary, tools that assist in virtual learning for teachers and students alike, and many other innovative programs. 

“In today’s challenging learning environment, we were so pleased to receive all of these applications and were even more pleased to be able to say yes to so many educators, “ said Kalmadge. “We hope that the surprise deliveries brought a little joy to a very stressful end of the school year.”

Congratulations to our 2020 Grant Winners. You can check out photos of our 2020 Winners here!