Health & Fitness
Back-to-school complete with backpacks and supplies
Tomorrow many children start their first day of Kindergarten in a Salem Public School. To ensure that every student has access to a backpack and age-appropriate school supplies, the Salem Education Foundation has just delivered over 400 backpacks to elementary school principals for children in need. This is all a part of their new “Fund-A-Need” Initiative that was first revealed last May at the Hats Off to Education Auction & Gala.
During the live auction portion of the evening, event attendees were asked to pause the celebratory tone of the event to consider a direct donation to support specific needs of Salem students on free and reduced priced lunch. During the “Fund-A-Need” portion of the live auction, a total of $8500 was raised. This year the funds will be used to provide backpacks filled with school supplies for every entering Kindergarten student on free or reduced-priced lunch. These funds will also support Salem High student-athletes in need by offering partial support for their annual sports fees, and to middle school students in need for music and arts enrichment activities including musical instrument rental. The SEF hopes that Fund-A-Need will become an important aspect of their annual auction so that they can partner with the schools to direct resources directly to the needs of Salem students.
Fund‐A-Need was developed last spring by the SEF Hats Off to Education! volunteer planning committee but the ideas for how to allocate those funds to students came directly from their conversations with school principals, including Mark Higgins at Witchcraft Heights Elementary School and Dave Angeramo at Salem High School. “Too many students arrive at school throughout the year without a backpack and without access to school supplies at home, which makes it challenging for them to complete assignments. The Fund-A-Need initiative will help to provide students in need with a few tools to help them get started on the right track this school year," said Higgins.
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"We're fortunate to have a lot of interest in our sports program at SHS. The funds raised through Fund-A‐Need will be a welcome boost to supporting our student-athletes,” said Angeramo. "No student-athletes are excluded from participation because of difficulty paying the sports fees. We always work to find solutions to fund the programs and the donation from the SEF is a huge help."
The SEF was founded in 1986 and has provided over $500K in funds to support local public schools. Funding is made possible by the generosity of many Salem residents and business owners who support public education in Salem through a donation to the Salem Education Foundation.