This doesn’t fall under the umbrella of fraud which is OK because despite our name, we’re about discussion and ethics of crowdfunding on top of calling out fake ass cancer patients being complete money-grubbing assholes on the internet.
Funding is tight at a number of schools and for one Southern Indiana district, the budget crisis comes down to either cutting classes or closing its doors, but you can help change that.
These days the small town of Medora, Indiana has at least one bright spot according to Superintendent Roger Bane.
That beacon is the high school.
“The school is the heartbeat of the community,” said Bane. “I don’t know of anyone that is associated with the school, or have kids in the school, that hasn’t asked what they can do to save it.”
In a community with few resources, students Jalen Beesley and Chase Booker depend on home economics and industrial technology classes to prepare them for the real world.
“Ever since my freshman year, I’ve taken these classes and outside of school it’s really shown,” said Beesley. “I use a lot of the things that these guys teach us in school.”
“Most kids don’t get a lot of help, and these classes help the kids that need the help that they get,” said Booker.
With the school district facing a $258,000 deficit, those classes are on the chopping block.
Bane is asking strangers on the internet for $114k to keep those programs alive. The GoFundMe page states:
Medora Community School Corporation is one of the smallest public schools in Indiana. Due to a sharp decline in enrollment, two programs will have to be cut for the 2016-2017 school year. Those cuts will result in several course offerings being eliminated and two teachers losing their jobs.
Our immediate goal is to maintain all current curricular offerings for our students. We are asking that you please help us save our Family Consumer Science and Industrial Technology classes.
Without donations and/or grants, maintaining and improving educational opportunities for our students will not be possible. The funding formula in Indiana was not developed to promote small rural schools, rather it was designed to eliminate small schools.
Though your humble author here has experience in the non-profit space, school budgets are beyond the scope of our expertise and we haven’t looked at the district’s budget so we can’t say if there’s an opportunity to fund these programs in-house were cuts to be made elsewhere.
What we can say is that it’s pretty sad schools are turning to shaking their virtual cup on the virtual corner to fund needed programs.
So far, the school has raised $685. Their deadline is June 1 of this year, making this the cluckiest of cluck missions barring some miracle between now and June.
