Dupage Policy Journal

The Downers Grove school board highlighted their Education Foundation for reaching an important milestone.

“Each year the foundation holds a great program and invites any, any teacher or staff member to apply to fill out an application with an idea that they have to enhance and improve education in their classroom or their workspace, but they might not have the funding for it,” Director of Community Engagement Megan Hewitt said during the meeting. “So this year we're very excited that the foundation awarded 23 grants worth over $22,000. That's double what they supported last year. So there were more opportunities, more funding to make these grants a reality. So we notified everyone internally right before a break and we'll be publishing in a public news release later this week. But I really wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who received a grant this year really for taking the initiative to apply for a grant to think of an idea and then next to use that funding to make that grant become a reality.”

The board uploaded a livestream of its public meeting to the district’s YouTube channel.

At their January 9th meeting, the Downers Grove school board highlighted the Downers Grove Education Foundation. The DGEF was founded in 2022 to enhance the education and opportunities within District 58. They provide programs like the Distinguished Service Award which recognizes some of the remarkable employees within the district, the Select 58 Awards which is an annual recognition of nominated students from the district who have shown remarkable effort and accomplishments, and the teacher grants, which can help a teacher fill in some of the needs within their classroom.

The board also discussed the upcoming 2023 to 2024 academic calendar.

Hewitt spoke about the recent efforts of the Education Foundation. The foundation recently celebrated 20 years of serving the school district, and although they didn’t have the biggest celebration, they were very proud of everything they have down. They decided to create a new logo and launch a whole new website for the foundation to better reflect and support future generations.

The board will meet again at 7 p.m. on Feb. 13 at Downers Grove Village Hall at 801 Burlington Avenue.

The foundation has an exciting event coming up: the Harlem Wizards basketball team will be playing the Downers Grove Trotters, a team made up of D58 staff from all schools. The game is a fundraising and community engagement event. At the end of last semester, some of the foundation representatives went to surprise teachers in person to tell them that they had received a grant for their classrooms, which was a fun holiday surprise and gift. This year they gave out 23 grants totaling $22,000 which is double what they could give the previous year.