Mountain Brook Schools Foundation celebrates 20th Anniversary

In 1992, a group of concerned citizens banded together to change their community by forming the Mountain Brook City Schools Foundation. Twenty years later, the impact of their efforts has strengthened the Mountain Brook Schools System with more than $4.7 million in funding.

The Foundation’s generous contributions over the past two decades, according to its website, mtnbrookschoolsfoundation.com, have been focused on the areas of library enhancement, professional learning and technology, with the latter receiving the most attention.

“The Mountain Brook Schools Foundation has really helped us with all of our technology and any enhancements to our school, like our (Apple) iPad labs and computer labs,” said Vic Wilson, Mountain Brook High School Principal. “We couldn’t operate at the level that we do without them.”

Not only has the Foundation funded an iPad lab for MBHS, but it has also supplied devices to the junior high and elementary schools. This year the foundation funded an iPad pilot program for sixth graders where 90 students were each assigned an iPad for the semester.

In its focus on professional learning, the foundation provides teachers with an array of training and courses to keep them up to date with new technology each summer. It also provides professional development for teachers, where small groups meet to discuss instruction strategies and plans for the upcoming school year. Teachers also receive stipends provided by the foundation.

“We’ve been fine tuning our focus and improving technology and teacher training,” new Foundation president Lloyd Shelton said. “We are currently trying to evaluate how to meet (the system’s) needs.”

Further showing it has the future of Mountain Brook Schools in mind, the Foundation recently began an endowment to combat inevitable financial challenges and the unpredictable nature of proration.

In its first year of campaigning for the endowment, the foundation raised nearly $5 million.

“With the Mountain Brook City Schools Foundation, we knew no matter what the financial state of the state was, the school system would continue to progress,” Executive Director Carmine Jordan said.

For the 20th anniversary, the foundation’s Development Committee, under the leadership of Derick Belden, is planning a tailgate before the before the Mountain Brook Varsity Football game against Hewitt-Trussville on Oct. 12. For more information, visit mtnbrookschoolsfoundation.com.