Powering Up Students for Learning!
At the Sept. 11, 2012 Board of Education meeting, Alameda Education Foundation (AEF) president Bill Sonneman presented grants to Alameda High School and Encinal High School to support technology needs in the schools’ academic intervention programs.
The funds were generated by Power Up 4 Learning, a collaboration between AEF and Alameda Municipal Power (AMP), that enables AMP customers to designate an amount to be added to their monthly power bill. AMP collects these donations and provides them to AEF to support technology needs at Alameda public schools.
“Power up 4 Learning is an easy and painless way to support Alameda schools,” explains Sonneman. For as little as $1.00 a month, AMP customers can cumulatively generate thousands of dollars for school technology needs.
“If just 10% of AMP customers donated $1.00 per month, we’d generate over $40,000 for technology needs; $5.00 per month would bring in over $200,000,” Sonneman says.
Technology can not only make it more interesting to learn, it can open up doors to learning for many students. This year’s grants will help students who need interventive support.
At Alameda High School, the funds will support Academic Enrichment classes, which support 9th and 10th graders in learning new academic strategies aimed at helping them achieve success in their core classes.
At Encinal High School it will support a series of classes including Academic Strategies, for Special Education students; Math Lab, aimed at students underperforming in math; Fusion, which helps students in reading and writing; and Advance, for students interested in excelling into Advanced Placement classes. The grants will be used by the high schools to purchase technology tools to support these programs.
Last year, over 2,500 students were supported with Power Up 4 Learning funds in areas such as reading intervention, science and math. Those stories can be found here.
More information and sign-ups for Power Up 4 Learning may be found on the Alameda Education Foundation website.