Support for Oak Park Schools

Not only does the Community Foundation support Oak Park schools, but that support is significant.

At the Feb. 20 Oak Park School Board meeting, I presented a log of Community Foundation grants for 2006. We issued over $154,000 in grants last year, with more than $149,000 going to Oak Park schools and their students. Most of these grants were provided through our activity committees, especially the Oak Park High School and Medea Creek Middle School Parent-Faculty clubs.

Other beneficiaries included the Oak Park Performing Arts Alliance, the Oak Park Neighborhood School Parent Advisory Board, and the Friends of the Oak Park Library. In the meantime, our activity committees- including our Oak Park High School Grad Night Committee- spent additional funds directly on programs for the benefit of Oak Park students.

In 2006, the Community Foundation had over 1,700 volunteers, most of whom worked through our activity committees in support of Oak Park schools. The Independent Sector, a nonprofit doing research into charities and their volunteers, estimates that $18 is added to our nation's economy with every hour a volunteer works for a charity. If our volunteers averaged only one hour of service per month last year, they provided over $360,000 of effort, mostly to Oak Park schools. David Ross, president Community Foundation for Oak Park