C.A.S.H. - "Creating Assets, Savings and Hope" (From the September 2004 Newsletter)
This new SVPP project is a community partnership that promotes financial stability for low-income families in the Tri-County area by expanding the use of low-income tax credits. CASH will encourage eligible families to apply for low-income tax credits and provide free tax return preparation services. CASH will encourage the wise use of the tax credits by promoting financial literacy and savings programs.
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) provides tax credits to low-income working individuals and families. The credit is nominal to families without children and scales up to over $4,000 for families with two or more children. Approximately $75 million of EITC go unclaimed each year in Oregon, with about half that amount in the Tri-County area. That dollar amount does not include the Oregon earned income tax credit or child dependent care and other credits. EITC and other credits puts badly needed dollars into the pockets of hard-working, deserving working families.
CASH wants to make sure that every individual and family eligible for the EITC receives the credits to which they are entitled. CASH will do so with outreach programs geared to educate people on the availability of the EITC. These programs will target locations with concentrations of low-income families such as employers, churches and social service agencies. CASH will help coordinate free tax preparation services to be delivered at workplaces, churches and public locations such as banks. Finally, CASH will promote financial literacy and encourage savings for home ownership and education.
A major recent accomplishment was selecting CASH's first Executive Director, Jim Harper. Jim formerly served as the VP of Administration for Arras/Morrison Child and Family Services and previously established a school-to-career program for Multnomah County. These positions followed a successful career in HR and manufacturing management positions with Wacker Siltronic and Tektronix. CASH is an opportunity for Jim to continue giving to the community and working to improve the lives of low-income working families. CASH is fortunate to have someone with Jim's organization skills and passion for helping at-risk children.
CASH is perfectly suited for SVPP's focus on helping at-risk children. The overwhelming majority of the EITC goes to low-income working families with children. As CASH gets organized over the coming months, there will be numerous opportunities for partner volunteer participation, including:
• Recruiting employers, churches and social services organizations to help serve as distribution channels for CASH's projects
• Coordinating recruiting and training tax preparers
• Coordinating tax preparation events
• Working with civic leaders - both elected officials and staff
• Development work to raise funds for CASH's operations
If you have an interest in joining the SVPP team supporting CASH, please contact the CASH project leader, Joel Kaplan, at 503.221.1287 or email
Joel Kaplan.
PEP - "Parental Engagement Program"
This exciting program gives SVPP the opportunity to get directly involved with public schools by forming partnerships with two Portland elementary schools: Clark and Kelly Elementary Schools. The program will focus on building stronger parental involvement in these schools.
About the schools: Both Clark and Kelly Elementary are Title 1 Schools located in SE Portland. A significant majority of the students at each school qualify for free lunch and breakfast. Both also have a significant (over 35%) minority population, spread amongst many different immigrant groups. Both are headed by terrific leaders, Christine Anderud (Clark) and John Horn (Kelly), both of them are very motivated to improve student performance and reduce the achievement gap. Clark Elementary was recently awarded a Blazer award by Portland Schools Foundation for the second year in a row in recognition of their school improvement efforts. Kelly Elementary is a SUN school and John has already marshaled a number of funding sources and partnerships to build stronger community support.
About the partnership with SVPP: A lot of research supports the fact that kids' achievement is heavily correlated with parental engagement and involvement in their child's education. But high poverty schools struggle to find ways to create strong parent communities, for many reasons.
SVPP's goal is to provide funding and volunteer power to help build a strong community of engaged parents at each school. Another SVPP goal is to define a model for community building that can be replicated and sustained across a large number of schools. The specific elements of the program include:
• Creation of a School Advisory Council at each school comprised of the principal, teachers, parents, and community members such as SVPP. The Advisory Council will work with the principal on strategies to build community partnerships to facilitate school improvement. The focus is also on building a core group of committed parents who gradually can form the basis of an active PTA and Site Council at each school.
• Sponsorship and coordination of a range of outreach activities and events to draw parents into the school.
Progress to date: Now that the 2005-2006 school year is about to begin, the PEP team has had meetings with each school to start planning the PEP-related activities and identifying volunteer opportunities for SVPP partners. Kelly has hired a dedicated coordinator which will be managing PEP and providing focus for the program. At Clark, the PEP activities will be managed with existing resources.
Volunteer opportunities:
1 - School Advisory Council: PEP needs two SVPP partners to sit on the School Advisory Board for each school. This will involve a monthly meeting with the principal, relevant staff and a small group of parents. Time commitment will be roughly 3-4 hours per month including meeting time. The role of SVPP on the School Advisory Board will be to act as an objective outside voice providing input to the creation of a school improvement plan, and possibly assisting in identifying potential sources of revenue or support from the community and helping with grant writing activities. SVPP's role is primarily to provide the principals with sound judgment, thoughtful advice, knowledge of the business community and a network to possible other partnerships. This will be a very rewarding volunteer experience for someone who is interested in establishing a meaningful relationship with a school community.
2 - Support of specific school events: Throughout the year each school will be organizing various events for parents and families in their school community. PEP will be looking for volunteers on an as-needed basis to support these events. This will require 2-3 hours on a one-off basis and will likely involve such activities as help in designing marketing materials for the event, staffing the door, administrative support, assisting with literacy events for the children of parents attending the event, etc. PEP would like to create a list of interested SVPP partners who can be called upon on an infrequent basis to help with these events.
3 - SMART program: Many SVPP partners have been involved in the SMART program as volunteer readers in the past. One way to support your investment in these schools is to request Kelly or Clark Elementary as your SMART school this year. This will provide partners a chance to interact directly with kids and teachers in the schools we supported by PEP. PEP encourages partners who are already or are interested in becoming SMART volunteers to get in touch with the SMART organization in the next month and request to volunteer at these two schools this year.
The PEP team will be reaching out to a subset of partners over the next weeks who have already indicated some interest. But there are still lots of spots to fill, so please get in touch if you are interested in getting more involved. The School Advisory Boards will be kicking off in early September so the goal is to get the SVPP advisors named within the next month.
