Foundation grants help schools through COVID-19 closure: Chromebooks given to students provide means to learn from home

The nonprofit Mountain Brook City Schools Foundation, founded in 1992, has given more than $7.1 million in grants to Mountain Brook Schools, according to Rachel Weingartner, the foundation’s executive director.

The grants supplement state and local funding and focus on technology, professional development and library enhancements. The schools benefit greatly from these grants even in normal times.

However, the foundation’s recent investments in technology in the schools proved to be critical when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived.

The virus forced the schools to close for the spring semester and switch entirely to electronic or distance learning.

Fortunately, the foundation’s grant in 2019 provided $200,000 to help provide a Chromebook computer for every Mountain Brook student. Thus the school system was able to respond quickly and effectively during the switch to electronic learning.

“Everyone being able to use the same type of device was instrumental in moving to the e-learning platform efficiently,” Charles Smith, foundation board president, told Village Living.

During the pandemic, MBS was able to provide a Chromebook to every student in the system — including elementary students — for distance learning. Mountain Brook Elementary alone distributed 455 Chromebooks to its students the first week of April.

Electronic learning still has its “challenges,” said Key Hudson, foundation board president-elect. “But I can’t imagine how much harder it would have been if my children had been sharing our home computer, without their apps preloaded,” said Hudson, who graduated from Mountain Brook High School and has a daughter and son who attend Mountain Brook Elementary.

Hudson also praises the “foresight” of Superintendent Dicky Barlow and others at the school system who realized a few years ago that each student needed to have his or her own device.

“No one foresaw a global pandemic [but] the system did see the need for students to use a consistent device for homework, testing and classroom use,” she said.

“I can’t imagine a school system better prepared than Mountain Brook,” Hudson said, referring to the relative ease of the transition to distance learning.

The Chromebooks were not the only technology purchased using foundation grants that proved important during the pandemic.

Barlow and Mountain Brook Junior High Principal Drew Clayton recorded podcasts from the school's new studio as a way to communicate with students and families.

“What the podcast has allowed us to do is to just let people know that we really are concerned for their children, that we’re trying to do everything that we can, and that everybody in the community — teachers, parents, students — needs to just show a lot of grace toward one another,” Barlow said.

There is also Seesaw, an app that allows elementary students to share their work with teachers. Hudson told Village Living in 2019 that the app allowed her to “see real-time” how her daughter was performing at Mountain Brook Elementary.

A smaller chunk of the foundation’s grant money goes to the school system’s libraries. Each library uses the funds it receives to update its collection of books, magazines, software and supplies.

“We are really what keeps our libraries funded,” Hudson said.

There’s a good reason that the foundation focuses its grants in technology, professional development and library enhancements, Smith said.

For any public school system in Alabama, there just isn’t enough money in the budget to cover all of the discretionary spending for those items, he said.

“Along with our friends in the PTO, the foundation helps fill the funding gap every year,” Smith said.

The foundation provides MBS with “a stable source of funding in these areas even when there is fluctuation in state and local tax dollar funding,” Hudson said.

It provides funding for “gap needs” in years when other sources are tight,” she said.

The foundation raises funds from local community donors through annual campaigns such as Give 180, the Grandparent’s Club and the Senior Class Legacy Gift.

The foundation also hosts a track meet in May as an annual fundraiser. In 2019, the event raised more than $50,000 for the foundation. However, the meet was canceled this year due to COVID-19.

Despite that cancellation, the foundation raised a record total of about $508,000 from community donors in 2019-20, an increase of more than $23,000 from the previous year, according to a foundation news release.

The foundation was able to successfully conclude both the Give 180 and Grandparents Club campaigns before COVID-19 hit, Smith said.

The Grandparents Club — in its third year and led by Mimi and Fred Renneker, Becky and Doug Rollins, and Margaret and Kip Porter — has provided “fundraising momentum” for the foundation, Smith said.

Perhaps most important to the success of the foundation’s fundraising, “the Mountain Brook community cares deeply about our school system,” Smith said. “Families here want their children to receive an exceptional education, and they understand the school system needs their financial support.”

A Mountain Brook resident, Smith is a 1998 graduate of Mountain Brook High School and has three sons in the city schools in the sixth, seventh and ninth grades.

“The most gratifying part of serving in this role is seeing firsthand the impact the foundation has on the school system,” Smith said. “One of my favorite experiences has been participating in the Institute for Innovation, where teachers present grant requests from the foundation. I have been beyond impressed with their passion, enthusiasm and creativity.”

The foundation gets “really excited when we can fund innovative teaching ideas,” Hudson said. “By funding the Institute for Innovation, we are able to support the teachers’ great ideas about how they can engage students more effectively.”

“We hear that some of our best teachers choose to come to Mountain Brook because of the professional development that they get,” she said.

“It is incredible to see teachers who care so much about teaching that they will give up their time during the summer to attend the Learning and Google Tech conferences,” Hudson said.

The foundation can also experiment and test ideas for the schools by hosting pilot programs.

“We were able to fund reading coaches at the elementary schools before the system saw the impact they had and were able to take them into their budget,” Hudson said.

The organization also hosted a pilot when the schools were searching for the best technology device for students, eventually picking the Chromebook. This saved a lot of money by making sure the right type of device was being funded, Hudson said.

She also praises Barlow and MBS for the approach they’ve taken to technology in the schools.’

“Our students don’t use technology for the sake of technology or to have the ‘coolest’ new toy,” she said. “The system uses technology to engage students, communicate with families and enhance the learning environment.”

Hudson has seen this at work with her own children. “When I ask my kindergartner what he learned in school that day, he often says ‘nothing,’ but when I ask him what he did, he tells me all about the things he played at school,” she said. “He doesn’t even realize he is learning because he is so engaged.”

The foundation has a board of 36 community volunteers and a $9 million endowment.

Each year, the foundation provides a grant from its endowment fund to be used in all six Mountain Brook schools: Brookwood Forest, Cherokee Bend, Crestline and Mountain Brook elementary schools, the junior high and the high school.