Neshaminy Education Foundation pivots for the pandemic

The Neshaminy Education Foundation (NEF) has donat­ed $18,000 to Neshaminy School District to fund the pur­chase of 435 blue­tooth micro­phone head­sets. The recharge­able units clip on to the users ear, and will make it eas­i­er for teach­ers to com­mu­ni­cate with their stu­dents who are in vir­tu­al learn­ing class­es on Zoom as they move around their classroom.

The NEF nor­mal­ly con­ducts a teacher grant pro­gram at this time of the year, fund­ing a vari­ety of projects across the District that allow teach­ers to obtain inno­v­a­tive edu­ca­tion­al equip­ment and pro­grams. Last year the NEF donat­ed $12,490 to fund eight class­room projects.

This year, the vol­un­teer board of the NEF respond­ed to the the changes in Neshaminy schools due to the the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic by mod­i­fy­ing the grant pro­gram for a sin­gle purchase.

“We did our grants dif­fer­ent­ly this year,” said NEF President Susan Weber, “because these are dif­fer­ent times. All the teach­ers are mak­ing changes in their instruc­tion, so we took this oppor­tu­ni­ty to finance a pur­chase that would sup­port all the teachers.”

I want to per­son­al­ly thank the Neshaminy Education Foundation for the gen­er­ous dona­tion to the Neshaminy School District,” said Michelle Burkholder, Assistant to the Superintendent for the District. “We tru­ly appre­ci­ate your com­mit­ment to our teach­ers as they edu­cate the stu­dents of Neshaminy dur­ing the pandemic.”

The Foundation is plan­ning addi­tion­al fundrais­ing dri­ves dur­ing the school year to help meet oth­er needs relat­ed to the pandemic.