Contribute
However you choose to contribute, thanks for your generosity!
Your contribution to SB Charter School makes an enormous difference in our continued success. Because contributions are built into our vision and operation, we make it possible for you to contribute in multiple ways, from financial donations and subscriptions, to participating in school operations and special projects, making your expertise available in classes, donating needed resources, and affiliate programs that cost you absolutely nothing.
Please select how you want to contribute below. Thanks
Make a donation or recurring pledge (Fully tax-deductible)
Donations and recurring pledges are fully tax-deductible, and recurring pledges can be canceled at any time for any reason.
Contribute your time, expertise and ideas
Whether you are helping us with fundraising activities, supporting our educational activities, sharing your unique cultural and professional perspectives with our students, or helping us materialize our “dream list”, we want to hear about you.
Please submit the form below, and a member of our Parent Alliance will contact you to get you started.
Get businesses to contribute, with NO COST TO YOU
«Cost-less» contributions
This type of contributions doesn’t require an out-of-pocket sum of money from you. Instead, these contributions take place transparently, when you do things that you may already do any way, such as buying books at Amazon, getting clothes for your children, or such.
We are trying to expand the spectrum of possible passive contributions you can make, so please check in this section often: you will feel great when you significantly contribute to our mission without having to subtract the contribution from your family’s budget!
Buy and donate clothes at SCHOOLA
Amazing savings on quality clothes and money for our school!
What can you do? It’s quite simple: click on the button above, and then…
- Shop for quality clothes: $2 of each $5 you spend goes to our school
- Donate your children’s lightly used quality clothes to benefit the school
- Share with others, so that your contribution multiplies with those of others
BoxTops for Education
With BoxTops, contributing to SBCS is fun, engages children, and is very effective. You just look for the BoxTops logo on products your family uses every day (See a complete list here), cut off the BoxTop tag and identifier, and file them away. Every once in a while, bring the collected boxtops clips to school. Each clip means $0.10 to the school, and the amount collected by SBCS grows quite fast.
eScrip – Contribute when you shop.
You can get all your favorite businesses, the ones you buy from every day, to make contributions to your school every time you buy. WITH NO COST TO YOU
It’s very simple to use: register yourself at eScript and select Santa Barbara Charter School as beneficiary. The rest happens automatically, every time you buy.
Start here.
Join our Parent Alliance
Overview of the SBCS Parent Alliance
The Parent Alliance is similar to a PTA or PTO at other schools. Our mission is to make SB Charter an exceptional school for our children.
The goals for the Parent Alliance are to create opportunities for our community to come together to have fun and fulfill our collective responsibility to make sure our school thrives and that the campus is well-maintained. We help to organize parent volunteers and serve as a committee for sharing ideas for the school. We differ from a traditional PTA/PTO in that we are not responsible for school fundraising. Fundraising is done by the SBCS Bright Futures team, although we do assist their efforts by providing help and support during the annual Bright Futures Luncheon fundraiser held in the spring.
PA Monthly Meetings and Agenda
The Parent Alliance meets once a month at 7:00 pm in the staff room/art room. Information about Parent Alliance activities will be posted on Parent Square, which is the SBCS online communication tool. You can check the Parent Square calendar for meeting dates, and Parent Square reminders are also sent on Mondays before the meeting. We welcome all parents to attend the meetings and encourage them to get involved in the SBCS community.
Do you have a good idea or a concern that you would like discussed at a Parent Alliance meeting? Contact Sarah Schroeder or Eriko MacDonald via email or Parent Square at least one week prior to a meeting so that your idea can be added to the agenda.
For a copy of the Parent Alliance Handbook, click here: PAHandbookRevise_Jan2014
School Communications
We believe that effective communication is essential to the functioning of our school. Please check Parent Square regularly for opportunities to sign up to help where you can. As a reminder, there is a 2 hour per week parent participation commitment here at SBCS and there are many jobs that require the support of our parent volunteers. In addition to what your child’s teacher may need, volunteer requests are posted on Parent Square regularly and it is a great way to get your parent participation hours met to contribute to the overall vision of our school.
Fundraising
While the Bright Futures Team is in charge of our one major fundraiser of the year, which is held in March, the alliance also contributes to funding via the affiliate programs mentioned in the section above.
Whether you are helping us with fundraising activities, supporting our educational activities, sharing your unique cultural and professional perspectives with our students, or helping us materialize our “dream list”, we want to hear about you.
If you want to be part of this vital bridge of solidarity between the community we serve (and whose educational goals we strive to materialize), and our school, please fill the form below, and let us know. We will get back to you immediately.
The Parent Alliance is a group of parents and teachers coming together to actively foster a spirit of cooperation and a sense of support, pride and enthusiasm, in order to nurture a sense of community within the school. To this end, the Parent Alliance focuses on fundraising, parent participation and community building.
Joining the Parent Alliance creates a long-term commitment to work towards the goals outlined above. Please let us know if you would like to join the working team by filling the form below. We will contact you to proceed forward. Thanks.
Our Wish List
Our Vision for the Future
When you think about contributing and helping, knowing that the gap between financial goals and real resources is large, start by sharing our wish list (our “dreams” list would perhaps be more adequate). Then think about the difference your cooperation could make in making them a reality.
At first sight, a request for your support competes for attention with many others, many ideas, many demands. By so doing, our request for your help runs the risk of becoming “just another” request; and yet, we have a strong vision driving all our efforts, a vision that is designed to help your child, all children in our school, and the community at large.
Art Room
SBCS seeks to create a dedicated art room for students. While we currently have use of a multi-purpose room for doing art lessons with some classes, we would like to create a dedicated space. This room would be designed for both the creation and display of a wide variety of art projects. A dedicated art room would accomplish the following:
- Allow efficient use of Art Specialist time.
- Provide a dedicated space for large-scale art projects.
- Gain the opportunity to display student art.
COST: Developing and stocking a designated art room would cost between $25,000 and $30,000. Annual supplies would cost between $10,000-$15,000.
Private Support Room
SBCS strives to meet the needs of every child, socially, emotionally, and academically. When children work with our school psychologist, need to undergo educational testing, or are working with our social group specialist, there is only one place for them to work confidentially—which is our large staff room/copy room/multi-use room. If this room is needed for confidential work, every other use must cease.
It would be ideal for us to have a smaller, confidential, private meeting room. A private meeting room would accomplish the following:
- Student confidentiality can be maintained when students are given services that support their social and emotional needs.
- No disruptions or distractions during educational testing.
COST: Buy or rent a small meeting room trailer or portable building that can be placed on our current site $8,000.
Outdoor Classroom
SBCS knows that learning happens everywhere and all the time. We value a hands-on approach to learning and appreciate offering students real-life studies whenever possible. The creation of an outdoor classroom would:
- Help us continue our work of teaching children in multiple ways, and fortify our teaching through multiple intelligences.
- Stimulate interdisciplinary studies and connect students to the world at large.
- Help blur the lines between academic learning and creative play.
COST: Buy and install a gazebo or large shade structure with seating and shade for a class of 24 students. We also want an activity cart with relevant learning materials. $20,000 for the shade structure, $5,000 for seating, and $3,000 for the cart and supplies.