By Khalida Sarwari
In the late afternoon and into the evening on Jan. 27, many phones will be ringing across Saratoga. On the line residents will hear the familiar voices of volunteers from the Saratoga Education Foundation asking for donations for the city’s schoolchildren.
This is the time of year when the organization collects the bulk of its donations, said David Guidry, one of SEF’s three presidents and the parent of a sixth-grader at Redwood Middle School. After last year’s phone-a-thon fundraiser, SEF raised nearly $60,000, not including a matching grant from a private donor.
“One thing we did last year which we’re hopeful to do this year is we had someone provide a matching grant,” Guidry said. “We’re going to see if we can do that again.”
Unlike last year, however, this year’s phone-a-thon will be done in one shift instead of two. Anywhere from 30 to 40 volunteers are expected to gather in one large office and make phone calls to a list of donors who have contributed in the past. Most tend to be parents of children in the Saratoga Union School District. Meanwhile, the district staff will assist by processing the pledges and generally providing good cheer, Guidry said.
The funds go toward various programs at the district’s four schools: Argonaut, Saratoga and Foothill elementary schools and Redwood Middle School.
“The idea is that we try to fund programs that go beyond just basic reading, writing and arithmetic programs,” Guidry said.
At the elementary level, the programs that will benefit from the funds are physical education, music, art, science, library and technology instruction.
“We have a technology instructor who teaches the kids computer literacy, how to use computer programs, how to do research,” Guidry said.
At the middle school, the funds will be used to support two full-time science teachers, a librarian and library and art class aides.
The money will be given to the district in the form of a grant for the 2013-2014 school year.
The phone-a-thon is just one of several ways that SEF collects donations annually. In the last five to 10 years, the organization has raised nearly $1 million each year. SEF is a volunteer-driven fundraising nonprofit consisting of parents and community members who support the Saratoga Union School District.
SEF, which is marking its 30th anniversary this year, was founded by parent volunteers in the wake of the passage of Proposition 13 by voters in 1978, an initiative that limited the tax rate for real estate and also played a role in the change to state financing of public schools. It was a time, according to Guidry, when many schools began cutting their programs as a result of the loss of property tax and state funding coming into the district.
“That meant that a lot of schools in the early ’80s were running into situations where they no longer had money and were cutting a lot of programs,” he said. “Saratoga was one of several communities that had an education foundation formed around that time in order to raise money to ensure that kids in the district still had a good educational experience.”
The organization’s focus on the programs it supports has changed over the years, but it has never wavered from the goal of ensuring that students in the district receive a well-rounded education, said Guidry.
“The concept of having a high-quality, balanced education has always been the purpose of SEF and it still is,” he said.
Over the years, SEF’s focus has shifted from science, music and arts programs to PE, library and technology programs.
“All of these, if we don’t get the funding every year, they’re all potentially at risk,” said Guidry. “With all of the state funding cuts, most of the programs that we fund would not exist because the money is not there from the state and from property taxes.”
The phone-a-thon takes place on Jan. 27 from 4 to 8 p.m. at Alain Pinel Realtors, 12772 Saratoga Sunnyvale Road in Saratoga. For more information about the phone-a-thon or SEF, visitsaratoga-sef.org.
The Saratoga Education Foundation will hold its annual phone-a-thon fundraiser on Jan. 27
