Education

The Bashas’ Fundraising Program

Kid’s Closet provides children with clothing and other school supplies so they can go to school. The Education Program is designed to make sure that these students are successful in school, up to and including college or a vocational school.

SaddleBrooke Community Outreach’s Education Program was started in 1999 at San Manuel High School. At that time, approximately 50% of the high school students were getting D’s or F’s in their math classes. In addition, only 8% of the students were passing the AIMS Math exam. This test is a graduation requirement.

Originally, about 15 tutors were recruited from SaddleBrooke to tutor math in grades 9 through 12. A computer tool called Accelerated Math allowed each tutor to work with about 7 students at a time. AccMath is a rapid testing tool that prints multiple choice questions for selected math concepts. It also grades the answers, which are penciled into a series of “bubbles” printed on an optical scan card. A few seconds after a student puts the card in a small optical reader (see left picture above), the computer corrects the student’s work and tells the tutor if there is a concept that the student needs help with. After the tutor reviews the problem math concept with the student (see right picture), the student is tested on a new set of problems to assess his or her understanding of the concept.

The use of this computer-aided tutoring quickly resulted in substantial gains in all areas of math. A special class was developed for all students who failed to pass the AIMS Math test. In its first year, about 80% of the students who failed the AIMS test passed it after taking this AIMS class. Therefore, Project Catapult was quickly expanded.

Math tutoring has expanded to schools in San Manuel, Oracle, and Catalina, and 2 Amphitheater School District high schools. Currently 125 volunteers are tutoring in these schools, helping with reading skills in addition to the math projects.  Test scores are up, and most youngsters are learning at or above their grade levels.

The Scholarship Program

The Education Program was expanded to include a scholarship program at the three high schools Project Catapult serves. At the present time, we have 19 scholarship recipients!

The Summer Enrichment Program

SBCO also supports a variety of activities over the summer offered by various schools and other organizations. These range from programs in the arts and educational opportunities to free swimming lessons.

We Need Tutors and Mentors

We are always looking for additional tutors in math and reading. Tutors need devote as little as 2 hours per week. We need mentors to work with our scholarship recipients.

If you are interested in this very worthwhile activity, write to Kaye Tague at: Ragtag51@wbhsi.net