Equal Access to Online Learning

Dear Friends & Family,

Impact | Puget Sound Elementary opened last fall with a promise to develop the next generation of equity-driven innovative leaders. In our first year, we delivered on that promise. We served an incredibly diverse group of kindergarten and first graders: 81% children of color, 71% low-income, 39% English Learners, 11 different languages spoken, in the heart of Tukwila, WA, a majority immigrant and refugee community. And this incredibly diverse group of scholars got amazing results: their reading growth put us in the top 5% of charter schools in the country, and their math growth put us in the top 15%. Moreover, we made progress towards closing pervasive racial and economic opportunity gaps: students of color made comparable gains to white students, and low-income students made comparable gains to their peers. 

​This school year, we are serving even more children with similar demographics, and our winter academic assessments showed that we are on track to achieve similar incredible results to those we saw last year. 

Our team has been tracking the coronavirus outbreak vigilantly, and has been working for the last couple weeks on contingency plans should we be forced to close. We have plans in place to be able to provide meals to any family that needs it at no cost to the family, and we are working on options for childcare prioritizing families of healthcare workers, first responders, and military personnel. While we do not have any confirmed COVID-19 cases in our school, we have been advised by the governor that in order to limit the spread of this pandemic in our community, we will need to close school. While we originally anticipated something along the lines of a 2-week closure, the most recent information is suggesting that it could be 6 weeks -- or more. 

Six weeks of closure in March and April, the months when we see children make the most academic gains, has the potential to be devastating. And the impact will be disproportionately felt: children of families with laptops and wifi at home will be able to access distance learning opportunities, while children without these resources will not. With a large number of low-income children in our school, we urgently need your help raising funds to purchase laptops and wifi hotspots for children who need them. Our goal is to raise the funds we need so we can place a rush order immediately and ensure equal access to online learning. Please contribute to our GoFundMe page now and/or forward this message widely - any amount helps.

Thank you for reading and considering this.

Impact Public Schools