Back To School Gala 2008

will be Thursday, October 16

Please mark your calendar!

• Enjoy great food, wine and desserts  

• Visit with friends and fellow school supporters                              

• Build strong schools

• Meet EEF grant recipients

• Enjoy performances by some of our finest student musicians

• Bring a favorite educator to dinner!

• Tickets are $50 per person, $1,000 per table

• Call 343-6877 for more information

2007 Gala Contributed to Record Campaign

Across Eugene District 4J, students are benefiting from a record $781,462 donated during 2007.  Gifts were enough to fund grants at every school (78 in all) on top of their donor-earmarked gifts.  An important part of EEF’s 2007 Annual Campaign was the Back-to-School Gala at which six districtwide proposals were funded.  Here’s a quick update: 

Sing On! for high-school choirs sent $1,000 to each campus so that teachers could buy more sheet music.  At North High, Paul Burch – just out of graduate school, now in his first assignment – is adding contemporary tunes to the repertoire he inherited from prior teachers.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car Lab materials are now available to any chemistry or physics teacher, letting up to 36 students at a time test the value of hydrogen gas as a method for storing energy.

Healthy Children Learn Better is expanding the number of sessions that serve children and teach their parents the value of well-child preventative care.  By the end of the year there will have been nine health clinics, eleven dental clinics, and a dental prevention program for kindergarteners and first-graders in four schools.

Strong Families/Strong Schools is the result when students new to town get matched with classes, clubs and services of which they were not aware, or when a struggling family gets a little financial assistance.

New Books for Middle Schools has enlarged the choices available to students (and their volunteer reading mentors).  Some of them prefer fiction; some prefer non-fiction; everybody has something new to read.

Science Kits, developed by 4J teachers for 4J teachers eleven years ago, circulate from a central storehouse to classrooms three times a year.  “EEF support is how we’ve kept Science Kits in the curriculum all these years,” says coordinator Angie Ruzicka.

Sing On! for high-school choirs sent $1,000 to each campus so that teachers could buy more sheet music.  At North High, Paul Burch – just out of graduate school, now in his first assignment – is adding contemporary tunes to the repertoire he inherited from prior teachers.