How can you enrich the classroom?: Local students benefit from nationwide program that matches teachers' proposals with willing donors.

Nov 17, 2008 (The Charlotte Observer - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- WB | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- At suburban Lake Wylie Elementary, music teacher Patti Anderson gets an allowance from the PTA to buy extras for her kids.

There's no such money at Westerly Hills, a high-poverty school where she spends half her teaching time. But a host of benefactors -- many of whom have never set foot in the west Charlotte school -- have bought her kids instruments, sheet music and classroom posters.

The kids at Westerly Hills -- along with dozens of other schools in the Charlotte region -- are reaping the rewards of a Bronx schoolteacher's brainstorm that has pumped more than $25 million into classrooms across the country.

DonorsChoose.org is an online matchmaking service between teachers seeking money for special projects and people who can help with the click of a mouse. The group, which started nationally in 2000, expanded to North Carolina four years ago and opened a Charlotte office in 2006.

Teachers in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools have netted more than $264,000 in donations -- including $78,000 to the eastside J.H. Gunn Elementary, where teachers have been particularly energetic about posting proposals.

"It's an incredible resource for teachers, especially now, with budget cuts and things like that," said first-grade teacher Beth Bishop, who has gotten books on tape for students learning English and extra classroom books to help her teach kids at different reading levels.

Teachers from the Carolinas have almost 2,200 projects online, hoping to appeal to people like Betty Dutton, a Charlotte grandmother who works at Wachovia. She heard about DonorsChoose a couple of years ago when a co-worker sent out an e-mail.

For Dutton, an avid reader who still delights at the memory of passing that gift to her son, the hook is helping pay for projects that help other children become readers. She's donated to several projects; one of her favorites was helping a teacher buy books that her impoverished students could take home to keep. "I said, 'Oh, yeah, that's a good one.'"

DonorsChoose screens the teacher proposals, takes donors' payments and orders the requested supplies from online vendors that provide discounts. Teachers get the supplies delivered to their classroom, and must promptly thank the donors by taking photos and having the students write notes.

To pay for administrative costs, donors pay a voluntary administrative fee. (Most agree to do so.) Charity Navigator, a watchdog organization that rates charities based on efficiency and ability to carry out their mission, gives the group its top rating -- four stars.

The group's aim isn't to replace public money for school supplies. Instead, it lets donors help with the things that have long sent teachers digging into their own wallets, from extra field trips to projects that liven up the routine.

CMS, for instance, provides extra "FOCUS" money for instructional supplies at high-poverty schools, where students have more needs and parents are less likely to organize big PTA fundraisers. The federal Title 1 program provides still more to help the highest-poverty schools improve reading.

Superintendent Peter Gorman sees DonorsChoose as a great supplement for all teachers. Even teachers at low-poverty suburban schools -- including Beverly Woods Elementary, where Gorman's daughter goes -- have gotten projects paid for.

"It's the extra little things that make (school) better," Gorman said.

When Anderson came to CMS about three years ago, she turned to DonorsChoose to help her start an after-school choir. Sheet music costs $1.50 to $2 for each child, and a choir needs several songs. Online donors gave more than $600, Westerly Hills got its choir and Anderson was hooked.

At wealthier schools, parents don't flinch at paying $5 to buy their kid a recorder. At Westerly Hills, many borrow the flute-like instruments from the school. Donors helped Anderson replace the older models that were starting to show tooth marks.

She replaced yellowing classroom posters that showed people in 1950s clothing and hairstyles playing musical instruments. She got a big purple rug so kindergartners wouldn't have to sit on the floor. On a recent afternoon, six boxed-up CD players sat on her floor, the latest delivery. Anderson plans to burn CDs of music she's having the kids study and let classroom teachers sign out the players, so classical music can play softly during quiet times.

Anderson beams as she shows off the donations: "I just feel like it's not right that they should be denied anything. These are not kids who are getting piano lessons and dance lessons. Pretty much all they get is what's given to them at school."

She is surprised that many teachers don't use DonorsChoose. She suspects some can't make the time or are intimidated by writing the plan. But unlike many institutional grants, which require proposals written in a rigid, jargon-filled format, this one just requires telling a story to real people in plain English.

Anderson's tips: Pitch inexpensive projects. Find a catchy title. And keep it simple.

"You don't have to have a master's degree in English," she says. "You just tell them about your kids."

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