Hello all people in my address book!!! Please read the following story of the district I work in and it’s struggle to get funding for students including my second language learners and struggling readers in my intervention groups. We have been working so hard for years to get funding passed by our community in order to meet all our amazing students’ needs and to repair all school buildings so they are up to code for our students. Teachers volunteer their own time every year around election time to make calls and knock on doors to try to get voters on our side. Unfortunately, Mapleton Public Schools just lost another bond election by a total of 56 votes! This loss is devastating. In addition to losing the bond money, we also lost the grant we were approved for which would have matched the $22,000,000 bond with $32,000,000 from the state. The Building Excellent Schools Today (BEST) program would have allowed us to completely redesign the schools at the crumbling Skyview Campus. We have until December 31, 2009 to raise the match … so we need your help! We are launching a “viral campaign” today, asking everyone who sees our call for help, to donate at least $1.00 toward our campaign and then forward the link to everyone they know … with everyone’s help, we just might raise the money! I just donated $25. Here’s the website: donate.mapleton.us I know this is pretty unusual for a school district to ask for help like this - and we can’t give up! It’s been heart warming to see so many people rallying here in the district - one of the teachers at our school has started raising funds for the district with her kindergarten class. Our kindergarten classes would like to contribute our popcorn profits from this year’s business to the fund raising pool. We won’t make $22,000,000, but in previous years we’ve earned around $500. We have $104 so far (from our sale today). We’ll have a total by Dec. 15th, but we could provide totals/money each week if that would be helpful -where should we send money (and are lots of $1 dollar bills and quarters okay?) Sarah »»»> Please help if you can! We are still hopeful that the community will step forward and support education. Here’s the link to forward on, add to your facebook and any websites that will get the word out. donate.mapleton.us We thank you for your support! Sarah Littmann Explore Elementary School