By Jeff Ursino, President and Trustee, Pajaro Valley Unified School District
I have often heard that the key to a great school is the community that supports it. The community’s support, their commitment to the educational process and the value the community places on education can help a school fulfill it’s full potential.
The schools that serve Aptos benefit from a community such as this. Parents volunteer in many of our local classrooms, hold fundraisers and turn out in large numbers for sporting events held at our local schools.
One organization that has been working to build a better Aptos High since 1979 is the Aptos Sports Foundation. In that year a group of Aptos High alumni came together to provide funds for school improvements and improve the local educational experience. To stay flexible in their fundraising and to identify independently projects deemed necessary it was decided to stay separate from the school district and maintain their autonomy.
To date the Foundation has donated over $3,300,000 toward improvements at our local high school and contributed to a wide range of projects. For instance, in partnership with another Aptos High alum, Trent Dilfer, the Sports Foundation was the driving force behind the Aptos High football stadium. They have also provided lights at the swimming pool and football field, an all weather track and improvements to the baseball field all at Aptos High. Though most of this work has been done independently of the district, the foundation and the school district have historically worked well together.
However, as the Sports Foundation has grown and the scope of the projects increased, there has become a greater need for a more formalized partnership with the school district. The soon-to-be-completed Freedom field at Aptos High is an example of what a formal partnership can achieve. That project was done with both school district funds and donations from the Sports Foundation. Working together the two organizations were able to gather resources and work with local government entities and community groups to complete the field in a timely manner. That would not have been possible without a good working relationship between the school district and the Sports Foundation.
A more formal partnership would give both the Aptos High Sports Foundation and the School District more of an opportunity to collaborate by sharing information more freely on what is needed and then deciding together what of the needs is most beneficial to local schools.
This type of partnership is not unprecedented. Pajaro Valley Unified School District currently has a variety of partnerships with mental health organizations and art foundations. These formal agreements streamline the sharing of information and help both the district and these various groups better serve local students.
As the Aptos sports Foundation has grown and it’s fundraising has increased the organization is in the process of building an endowment fund to serve the students of not only Aptos High but Aptos area schools. This type of focus on local schools will improve student’s educational experience in all of our local feeder schools. It also makes the idea of a partnership more crucial. For the Foundation to be able to work at the 5 local schools it will need support that individual administrators will find hard, with all of the other demands on their time, to provide. A formal partnership will allow the Sports Foundation to work directly with individuals at the senior level of the district and alleviate work for more local administrators.
To further this cause I intend to put forth a motion to the Board of Trustees in the coming month to formalize the partnership between the two entities. This partnership will help the district and the Foundation work more closely together and get needed projects completed in a timelier manner.
It is often said that to have a great school you need good students, dedicated teachers and administrators and a community that supports education. Aptos Sports Foundation is a local example of what a group of alumni can do when a community rallies around a local school and the students of that community.