Giving Thought: Braided funding for community impact in education
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Fostering lifelong learning and empowering individuals to take responsibility for themselves, their learning, and their community is at the core of Compass for Lifelong Discovery’s (Compass) mission. Now, they are embarking on an opportunity for the community to give back in support of their long-term success and sustainability.
Since its founding in 1970, Compass, an educational non-profit, has supported the operation of public charter schools in our region. It manages the Carbondale Community School (CCS) and the Aspen Community School (ACS) and is beloved by many in our community. Both schools lean heavily on the role of community in developing the individual. Community traditions — such as the weekly all-school meetings, mixed-age learning opportunities, and all-school performances — bring to life the “community” in these community schools. They balance these traditions with an agile and relevant learner-centered culture that meets the needs of the students and families.
ACS was founded in 1970 in Woody Creek to offer another academic option to parents in our region. Later in 1996, CCS was founded to offer another option in another part of the valley. The CCS school building was constructed in 1998 as a K-8 charter school authorized through Roaring Fork School District. To allow differentiated instruction to meet individual student needs, CCS is committed to small class sizes. The total school enrollment is 140 children, and the school serves families from Silt to Snowmass, with 80% living near Carbondale.
The organization exists today because of the individual and collective passion and commitment of its founders, those who followed, and the people here now. They strive for exceptional learning environments each day where they live their mission through academics, the arts, and experiential learning.
Charter schools are tuition-free public schools that function autonomously from the district schools. Both CCS and ACS are public charter schools that provide an additional choice for families in our region. Funding for annual operating expenses for these community schools comes primarily from the State of Colorado with some additional dollars coming from the federal government through the school districts through which they are authorized. Charter schools rely on fundraising dollars to help fill the gap between state and federal funding and the actual cost of running the school while maintaining a small class size. Additionally, ACS and CCS depend on grants and fundraising to pay for any capital projects required for building maintenance.
As with all aging buildings, the CCS school building is in critical need of repairs. In 2023, CCS was awarded the Building Excellent Schools Today (BEST) Grant to support a $2.3 million capital campaign to improve the school’s health and safety systems. The BEST Grant, established by the Colorado Department of Education in 2008, provides essential funding for school districts, charter schools, boards of cooperative educational services, and the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind through a competitive grant program. It can be used to build new schools or construction projects to update existing school facilities. Since its inception, the BEST Grant has awarded $2.5 billion to 525 Colorado schools to improve the health and safety of over 300,000 students.
In 2014, ACS received a BEST Grant to support the construction of its current school building. Today, the BEST Grant will provide a 41% match for CCS for total project funding, requiring the school to raise the remaining 59%.
The CCS Capital Campaign will fund campus security, code compliance, and energy efficiency improvements, providing a safe campus with improved environmental standards.
The safety and security updates are crucial due to the unfortunate and changing school safety issues that schools across the country face. The updates funded by this project will bring CCS up to the recommended security measures at other schools in our region.
The CCS Capital Campaign has a goal of $2.3 million; the BEST Grant will provide a 41% match to the budget, approximately $955,000. CCS has raised over $760,000 toward its matching goal of $1,375,000. Significant support has come from additional grants, businesses, and individual donors throughout the valley, including Compass board members. CCS has received a generous Garfield County Federal Mineral Lease District grant to support and support from the Gates Family Foundation for this project.
The BEST Grant opportunity exemplifies the power of braiding public and private funding for profound community impact. Community support for this campaign has the potential to be nearly twice as impactful as it would be without the matching grant. This will allow a community asset to continue to serve our region, offering parents and children access to educational opportunities that meet their needs.
To find out more about the schools or this project, contact Ellie Hahn at ehahn@discovercompass.org for additional information.
Allison Alexander is the director of strategic partnerships and communication at Aspen Community Foundation. ACF with the support of its donors works with a number of non-profits in the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys. Throughout the year, we will work to highlight non-profits in the region.
Allison Alexander is the Director Strategic Partnerships and Communication at Aspen Community Foundation. ACF with the support of its donors works with a number of nonprofits in the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys. Throughout the year, we will work to highlight nonprofits in the region.
