CEF Awards Major Grant to School District

The Canby Education Foundation, tapping resources from generous local donors, has awarded a major new grant to the School District. The purpose is to help coordinate better use of Canby’s community resources to focus on a key district goal—improving middle and high school students’ critical thinking abilities. The idea took root from the work of the 112 member Canby Vision Team last year. That team identified developing critical thinking skills as the top priority for our local schools. They also identified the need for the community to “step up to the plate” to share responsibilities for ensuring student success, going so far as to develop a “Community Compact” that described specific kinds of responsibilities that business and other community leaders, parents, students and district staff should carry out.

The Canby Education Foundation is aware of the negative impact of losing of more than 20% of Canby’s teachers and scores of school days over the past 5 years. Seeing no immediate relief in sight, CEF decided to take action to help bring this new vision of community support to life. Superintendent John Steach said, “I can’t thank the Foundation enough for this grant! While I wasn’t here last year to watch the Vision Team’s work, the phrase I’ve heard most in describing their work is the need for ‘co-laboring’ with the Community (working together) to help our students succeed as adults. The work supported through this grant will help us achieve a major system-wide goal for our students.’ Dr. Rex Hagans, Chair of the Canby Education Foundation Board added, “Our grant will provide the initial resources to help the District and the community build a much more extensive and coordinated system for the use of community expertise to help our middle and high schoolers prepare themselves as good critical thinkers and problem solvers. We envision mentors and tutors from all sectors of the community working with our students to augment our teachers’ efforts to develop the understandings and 21st century skills needed to cope with the reality of constant change. These include ways to skillfully examine data; carefully listen, study and evaluate solution alternatives; and develop creative innovative answers to real world problems. We envision students learning directly from Canby’s rich array of talent in businesses, government agencies and non profit groups about what it really takes to succeed in those places. We also envision parents and families playing a key role in reinforcing the importance of this work on critical thinking. All of this will not happen with just good intentions. It will take sustained effort and support. We invite others in the community to join us in investing time and financial resources to bring this vision to reality.” The District will shortly issue a job announcement for a Coordinator of Community Based Learning Resources. Hagans and Steach said, “A skillful and savvy people oriented Coordinator will be the key element in making this a big success for our students. We strongly encourage those interested in the position to apply.”

For more information about how you can give to the Canby Education Foundation to help them continue to support our local school system, contact Mary Walsh, Executive Director at 503-263-8299 or go to the Foundation’s web site canbyedfoundation.org.