Blog

When Westview High School students need extra academic help, they have a new place to turn to this year for support. Watch Me Fly, which receives funding from the Beaverton Education Foundation, provides students with opportunities to get the after school homework help they crave, while building strong relationships with tutors, teachers and other students. 

“Our students need more than our regular study hall,” says Benjamin Prange, Westview’s activities director who oversees the program. “Watch Me Fly offers them personalized attention and additional time to tackle subjects they struggle with. And we hold them accountable along the way. We encourage them to focus their questions and dig into specific areas they want to improve, whether it’s math, science or writing.”

Watch Me Fly uses both teachers and student mentors as tutors and serves the entire spectrum of Westview’s student population. The student-to-tutor ratio is dramatically smaller than in regular classes, with often only two students sharing one tutor for the hour-and-a-half sessions that are offered one or two times each week after school. 

“One of the things that has been popular with teachers is sending their kids to Watch Me Fly to receive help from other students,” says Prange. “Some kids feel more comfortable asking their peers for support, while others prefer working with teachers, so we offer both options,” says Prange.  

Zachary, a Westview senior, appreciates the after hours access to his teachers and the opportunity to get help in a smaller, less distracted environment. “It allows me to ask as many questions as I’d like, so I can get the specific help I need to prepare for a test. I feel less stressed and my grades are better now,” he says. 

Watch Me Fly has already surpassed its goal to support 75 students this academic year, and teachers see a noticeable difference already. Kristin Buys, a Westview math teacher and Watch Me Fly tutor, says that after participating in the program, students have more confidence, participate more in class, and are willing to ask questions in class — and they complete more homework, too. 

“Watch Me Fly students know that there are both peers and adults who can help. When students work with peers, they now have a resource to use even when a teacher isn’t available,” says Buys. “Because of the way the program is structured, students feel like coming to tutoring is normal, and they don’t feel embarrassed about asking for help.”

Aine Sonnen’s ties to Beaverton public schools run long and deep, and her connections and support for Beaverton Education Foundation go nearly back as far. To her, giving and receiving support from her community is priceless. 

“It’s hard to remember since it was so long ago, probably 20 years now, but I think my first BEF donation was to support a literacy program at Beaver Acres Elementary School, where I was teaching and my two sons were in school,” reminisces Aine, who has taught in the District since 1996 at Beaver Acres, Hiteon, and now Cooper Mountain Elementary Schools. 

Since then, she’s not only grown her donations to BEF, but also seen first-hand the benefits of BEF’s awards to her schools. When she and her colleagues needed new technology so their young students could see screen images better as the natural light moved around their classrooms during the day — since seeing those images clearly makes a huge difference when you’re learning to read, she says — BEF was there with an award for the necessary devices. And after BEF’s Summer Boost program provided high-interest books for elementary students across the District to keep to build their home libraries, two new readers excitedly approached Aine on the first day of school this fall to show her how they could now read the books they’d received thanks to BEF. 

“I love how BEF facilitates local support for local projects,” says Aine, who values not only BEF’s classroom projects, but the impact of its District-wide initiatives. “BEF funds programs with an equity lens, making sure all students can have the same experiences, no matter how much their PTO can raise. I give to BEF because I know they’re going to get the biggest reach with my donations.”

For years, Aine has made a monthly donation to BEF, and now uses the payroll deduction option. When she stops to think about it, after a year, she’s given $240 with just $20 a month. “I might not feel able to give a larger sum like that all at once, but I can afford $20 at a time. Now that the automatic deduction happens on my payday, I don’t miss it,” she says.  

“BEF really gives kids experiences that make them feel so successful at learning and excited about school,” Aine says. “As a teacher, BEF gives me flexibility to do what I need to do to make learning engaging. I’m so grateful to be able to have support from BEF and to be able to help, too.”

Building on Beaverton Education Foundation’s decade-long tradition of supporting the best strategies that mitigate the summer slide for Beaverton’s elementary school students, BEF announces a $134,000 investment in Summer Boost. The educator-driven program, first piloted last year, will combat summer learning loss and help students at 12 elementary schools engage with reading and math over summer break. Summer Boost is one of seven new Kids Count Grants, providing a total of $194,000 in support of summer and after school enrichment.

Summer slide, the academic regression known to happen when school is out for the summer, is a significant problem for young readers, Beaverton educators say, and it builds on pandemic-related learning losses. Oregon’s 2021-22 student test scores revealed that reading, writing and math skills plummeted compared to pre-pandemic levels, especially for the most vulnerable students.

Summer programming can not only help reduce summer learning loss, but also lift students up to grade level. Over the past ten years, BEF incubated and helped grow Camp Achieve, an in-person summer school program that successfully counters the summer slide by integrating academic learning with positive school experiences for elementary students. During the pandemic, Camp Achieve was adopted by the district for summer learning, and the district is bringing it to scale with public funding.

Now BEF is partnering with the same district educators who created Camp Achieve to develop the next generation of summer interventions for students — a program that provides students and families with the tools they need to engage in reading and math at home. Summer Boost started last year at five schools with 400 students, and expands this summer to 16 schools with 2,000 students. 

“Summer Boost brings programming to the students, and makes it easier for families to help students maintain the daily habit of reading,” says Amy Chamberlain, principal at Cedar Mill Elementary, one of the driving forces behind Summer Boost. “We remove barriers like transportation and scheduling, while providing reading materials that really interest and engage the students.”

Before summer break, students will “shop” for free books that have been pre-selected by reading specialists to be good fit, high interest books for all levels. They’ll fill a bag with books, math games, and other supplies that will encourage their love of reading and math. Families will receive information about why daily reading is important and how to engage their children in the reading and math activities. To build community and excitement, Summer Boost begins and ends with celebrations, and there will be a mid-summer opportunity for educators and students to connect in person.

“Summer Boost allows us to place high interest, just-right books in the hands of our striving readers. Because they are books the students chose, they are more likely to read them,” explains Christina Batsell, principal at Terra Linda Elementary, who’s working closely with Chamberlain to scale up Summer Boost. “Our data from last summer shows that many students who needed a reading intervention in the spring no longer needed it in the fall.” 

Summer Boost is funded by BEF’s Kids Count Grants program, recognizing extended day and summer programs that encompass the full range of BEF’s impact areas. Other grants for 2023-24 include Middle School Band Camp, Trades Exploration summer and after school programming, Stoller and Meadow Park Middle Schools’ collaborative multilingual libraries, and school-specific summer and afterschool enrichment at three elementary schools. 

Generous support from our thousands of individual donors make Kids Count Grants possible, and our foundation and business partner support is being leveraged for specific projects. Thank you to First Tech Federal Credit Union, Genentech, Intel, Juan Young Trust, Meyer Memorial Trust, OCF Joseph E. Weston Fund, and additional donors through advised funds at the Oregon Community Foundation.

For Leonard Simpson, teaching and supporting education have been at his core for more than 50 years. He’s contributed to Beaverton Education Foundation every year for the past two decades because of its broad reach and impact across Beaverton, and he’s inspired his son to get involved in BEF, too. 

Leonard and his late wife, Lenore, moved to Beaverton more than 50 years ago. He began teaching at Portland State University, where he spent more than 28 years as a beloved biology professor focusing on zoology and animal biology. She taught in the Beaverton School District for 34 years. Leonard’s love for travel — all told, he’s visited 50 countries — brought him on marine biology research trips to the far reaches of the world, like a lake in Palau filled with non-stinging jellyfish, and on many leisure trips with his son, Eric. 

Eric grew up going to Beaverton public schools and graduated from Sunset High School. Following in his parents’ footsteps, he got involved in public education and was elected to the Beaverton School Board in 2015. Last year, Eric became the Beaverton School Board liaison to BEF’s board of directors.

Leonard says he often donated to causes related to Eric’s education as he was growing up. Since 2003, he has made a contribution to BEF nearly every year, including several gifts during Answer the Call, BEF’s annual fall fundraiser. 

“Education is important to me since I lived it and loved teaching,” Leonard says. “I’m very interested in supporting the education systems that my family has been involved in. Given our ties to Beaverton public schools, donating to BEF is of major importance because it’s doing impressive work helping students across all Beaverton schools.”

Make a donation today to help level the playing field so every student can prepare for their brightest future.

Fifth graders at Fir Grove Elementary gathered around a canvas spread out on their classroom floor, using iPads to direct their new robots back and forth over paint. From their point of view the result is a colorful, collaborative painting they’re proud to hang in their school’s hallway. From their teacher’s perspective, lessons in science, technology, and art came together beautifully. 

The robots used in this project were funded by the Beaverton Education Foundation’s Building STEAM 4 All initiative, which launched in 2008, and featured in a Beaverton School District video, illustrating the strength of the long-standing partnership between the two organizations. 

“Activities like this one at Fir Grove bring to life BEF’s strategy to advance hands-on STEAM learning in novel and engaging ways. Sometimes that means providing supplies and devices, but it always involves a partnership with district educators,” says Kristine Baggett, BEF’s executive director. 

BEF’s Building STEAM 4 All initiative directly collaborates with the district’s tech educators and classroom teachers to support integration of STEAM — science, technology, engineering, art and math — into their classrooms, at all levels. 

Lindsay Ruhnke, Fir Grove’s technology instructional assistant, says, “Instead of just doing science or just doing technology, we’re always looking for ways to incorporate all those things into learning because it really helps students grow their brains and problem solving centers.” 

Last year, BEF supported  STEAM classroom projects and afterschool and summer enrichment programs that reached across all 54 Beaverton schools, offering experiences in robotics, coding, maker-education, 3D design and printing and more. BEF also helped restock the Innovation Lending Library so that schools do not need to have its own set of gadgets, reducing costs as well as increasing access among schools — and the items are so popular, they’re all reserved for the rest of the year. We also added new equipment in maker spaces to improve student access. 

BEF also helped equip Future Labs at all comprehensive middle schools across the district. Future Labs are specially designed so that eighth graders can explore technical programs and careers, such as in 3D design, structural engineering, video/audio production and automation. And this spring, thanks to BEF funding, middle schoolers will build an antenna on a “ham radio” to track weather satellites then convert that audio into visual weather maps.

“All the programs supported by Building STEAM 4 All are designed to engage students, and inspire them to learn now and in the future,” Baggett says. 

For Ruby, a Fir Grove fifth grader, that day she made art with robots taught her more than STEAM concepts. “It shows our school can be really creative. I really liked how we got to paint with the robots,” she says.