We have two generous donors, Mary and R.W. Nelson, who have offered to match every $3 gift from you towards Learning to Achieve with $1. Learning to Achieve is a summer program which helps our students maintain learning skills developed during the regular school year. We currently have an endowment that can serve 50 students. We would like to increase the funding for this program making it available to at least 100 students by Summer 2010.
According to Johns Hopkins University’s National Center for Summer Learning:
- Most students lose two months of math skills over the summer.
- Low-income students also lose reading skills.
- Most of the loss occurs in elementary school, so that by the time low-income youths reach fifth grade, they are academically 2 ½ years behind children from affluent families.
Summer School is more a necessity than an addendum if our students are to remain at grade-level during the summer months. Despite the importance of summer school, it still falls outside the nine-month curriculum so funding must come from outside sources.
Our summer school program, Learning to Achieve, began to receive funding for an endowment in 2005 when the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas/Omaha Regional Community gave us their first-ever Legacy Grant of $100,000 to endow the summer school program. In the years following, we received Prairie Meadows Community Betterment Grants, funds from the estate of the late Stephen and Lois Adalac, a grant from the Freas Foundation, contributions from the Mercy Foundation and from individual supporters of Holy Family School. Now through the generosity of the Nelson’s matching gift, we hope to grow this program to serve more and more students at Holy Family School!