a Note from FoCA CO-PRESIDENTS

The 2019-2020 school year began not all that differently from other years, with a fantastic Back to School Jam turnout, and a new MLK Day service event to improve the school campus. Then, in February of 2020, the world entered an unprecedented time -- the COVID19 pandemic. Due to needed precautions and new state and city regulations, students rapidly moved to a virtual learning platform, where everyone from families and school staff adjusted to changes with flexibility. Even our annual fundraiser, FoCA Night Out, was quickly and successfully turned into FoCA Night In -- a virtual silent auction and live-streamed event. Through these difficult transitions, we saw the amazing and tireless work of the teachers and staff at Chester Arthur, and the resilience and strength of students and families. FoCA is proud to call Chester Arthur’s community home. 

As this was a year of many changes, we are grateful to be led by our principal, Dr. Mary Libby, this past year. Dr. Libby has continued her thoughtful and multi-faceted approach, working directly with students, families, teachers and staff. Even throughout the transition to virtual learning, Dr. Libby has maintained open communications with FoCA and the entire Arthur community, holding monthly virtual town hall meetings and sending weekly newsletters. We have very much enjoyed partnering with her this year, and look forward to the coming years.

This year also saw the departure of two monumental FoCA board members: founding member Mike Burlando and co-president Shannon Braden. FoCA simply would not be what it is today without their dedication, leadership and tireless support. Please join us in thanking Shannon and Mike for their incredible service to the Arthur community. FoCA is bringing on two new members who have been committed FoCA committee members, Amy Schulz and Chuck Nawoj.

Despite its challenges, this has also been an exciting year for FoCA’s fundraising and supported programs. We raised $166,352, which were used to fund teachers’ needs in the classroom, expanded Spanish instruction, art and music education, extra-curricular yoga, Playworks coaches, classroom technology like Chromebooks and Smartboards, and professional development. Of course, none of these successes would be possible without the vital contributions of the larger FoCA community. We remain grateful to all those who have given their time and talents serving on our various committees, attending and volunteering at our events, and donating to support all that we do for Arthur students, each of whom matter and all of whom benefit from your generosity now and in the year to come. 

Many thanks,

Leigh Botwinik and Noah Buboltz, FoCA Co-Presidents

HSA Presidents
Carolyn Kaufmann &
Rebecca Gaertner

The Home and School Association (HSA) is the direct link between Arthur families and student life at Chester Arthur. We work to connect and excite Chester Arthur families, teachers and staff with school activities such as a Fall & Spring movie night; a monthly student of the month breakfast; teacher, guidance counselor and administrator appreciation days; PSSA moral support; support for 8th grade move-up activities; a spring Fun Day; and an end-of-year celebration for all Arthur families.

The HSA is also FoCA’s partner in the school. Both organizations regularly collaborate to assist Arthur’s amazing teachers and staff in their efforts to ensure a fun and safe educational experience for all Arthur students.

-Carolyn Kaufmann & Rebecca Gaertner,
HSA Co-Presidents

FoCA Night In

In a 48-hour time span, our marquee fundraising event of the year -- FoCA Night Out -- turned into FoCA Night In. The event was scheduled for what would turn out to be the day after the last in-person day of the 2019-2020 school year. And so after we cancelled the in-person event, we mobilized the broader community to find volunteers with totally different skill sets in order to turn this into a highly successful, and completely virtual, event. One volunteer with a background in programming created a website that aired original video content (complete with an emcee), played a music stream from a customized Spotify playlist so people could have a socially distanced dance party at home and displayed a real-time thermometer to show the money raised through our virtual auction. 

Through a flash appeal, we raised $11,225 -- enough money to soundproof our extremely loud gymnasium. And, amazingly, despite the fact that all of our supporters were home instead of at a party, in the end we brought home more money through party tickets and the virtual auction -- just over $100,000 -- than we ever had before at a FoCA Night Out. It was an extraordinary, and record-breaking, evening.

Back to School Block Party

In the fall of 2019, FoCA again partnered with the Chester Arthur HSA to host Arthur’s third annual Back To School Jam. We spent a beautiful Saturday with hundreds of students, families and community members on Arthur’s schoolyard. There were free hot dogs and water ice for the students, and a DJ spinning tunes for everyone. Playworks organized activities by age, and we hosted a basketball tournament for older kids and adults. It was a wonderful day of connection and community for Arthur families that helped to kick off the new school year. 

Little FoCA Event: Virtual Baby World Play

In April, before we all became experts at virtual events, 30 families joined FoCA and Baby Wordplay for a session filled with singing, reading, music and more. Miss Pam’s energy translated across the screen as she was able to engage our youngest FoCA friends through songs and storytelling. We are so grateful to Baby Wordplay for partnering on this event.

Martin Luther King Service Day

FoCA hosted a new community service event on MLK Day in January to make physical improvements to the school campus and support the entire community. We had nearly 100 adults and children, including students, families, school staff and community members who gave their day to work on various aspects of the school. Adult volunteers painted the new restorative room and part of the auditorium, while older children and adults worked with our art teacher, Ms. Falcon, to paint a beautifully designed mural for our central stairwell. In addition, children were able to work with The Handwork Studio to sew by hand and create basic stuffed animals which were then donated to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children.

Schoolyard Planting and Clean-up

Way back in the summer of 2019, our Building and Grounds committee stepped it up to carry out individual clean-ups and a weekly watering schedule to make sure the campus was ready for our students’ return. The fall of 2019 featured our annual Fall Clean-Up, which attracted strong attendance from volunteers. Unfortunately the start of the COVID pandemic forced us to cancel our Spring Spruce-Up, but we are making up for it with some repairs and improvements to the berm in 2021. Stay tuned!

Teacher Mini-grants

Teacher mini-grants are a way for our teachers to have immediate needs in their classrooms met by FoCA. Last school year FoCA purchased and delivered materials to many teachers, administrators and even the school nurse. Examples of mini-grants purchases included a kindergarten whiteboard, computer headphones, board games for recess, a turtle aquarium for our middle school autistic support class and even bus tickets for students to participate in an off-site dancing competition.

Playworks

Playworks brings a trained coach to schools to organize sports and other activities during traditionally unstructured times. A particularly powerful component of the Playworks model is its junior coaches program, in which Arthur’s coach prepared upper academy students to assist during recess, organizing games for the younger students and helping them to productively work through disagreements that may arise.  Research shows that Playworks schools experience less bullying, increased safety and more physical activity. 

Math Coach/Professional Development

Teacher coaches enhance teachers’ content knowledge, model new instructional strategies, and help develop high quality lesson plans. Coaches support each teacher through an instructional coaching cycle composed of goal-setting, learning, observation/data collection and reflection. Coaches help teachers understand the demands of grade-level academic standards and analyze student achievement data. FoCA supported a contract with a high quality provider of math professional learning, Carnegie Learning. These supports ensured that teachers were best positioned to identify the strengths and needs of each student and use this information to provide targeted instructional supports and resources. Since Arthur began working with Carnegies’s teacher coaches in 2015, student test scores in math have increased 20+ points on the PSSAs.

Fundations

Ensuring a strong literacy curriculum for our youngest students continues to be a priority and is the critical foundation for all future learning. Fundations is a multisensory phonics spelling, and handwriting program that is informed by an extensive research base and has proven effective at Arthur. Fundations instructs students in phonemic awareness and word study and contributes to fluency, vocabulary development and the applications of strategies for understanding text. Since implementing Fundations at Arthur in 2014, we’ve seen a 66 point increase in Student Progress Reports scores for K-2 student reading at grade level. 

Bilingual Butterflies 

One of our most significant programatic expenditures is Spanish instruction -- an opportunity that our public school students wouldn’t otherwise be afforded. Bilingual Butterflies is a local Philadelphia program that sends teachers into schools to nurture their abilities to learn a new language. In 2019-2020, students in grades k-6 participated in weekly Spanish classes.

REVENUE

Corporate/
Organizational Giving/Other

$12,066

Individual Giving

$36,003

Events

$99.488

Grants

$18,500

_____________________________

Revenues Total

$166,352

This school year will forever be remembered for the global pandemic that forced our children and teachers to adjust to entirely new way of learning, communicating, and living. Of course, this brought challenges. But our FoCA community showed resilience -- and innovation.

We turned our annual marquee fundraiser, FoCA Night Out, into FoCA Night In. The event was scheduled for the day after what would become the last in-person school day of the year. Our board came together in a series of emergency meetings to move the event into a virtual experience. We built an interactive web portal so the community could stream FoCA Night In. We had a Spotify playlist for all to listen to while social distancing, and we conducted our most successful auction yet, entirely through phones and computers. We raised more money -- in excess of $100,000 -- than we ever have at a FoCA Night Out. 

We continued the virtual community-building model over the next several months, holding a virtual Little FoCA event with our longtime partners at Baby Wordplay. Thirty families participated. 

And we didn’t lose sight of the gravity of the moment. A team of volunteers created the FoCA Covid Relief Fund, to support families affected by the pandemic and ensuing economic collapse. We spent more than $8,000, and enlisted community members for distribution. FoCA purchased school supplies (paper, pens, crayons, markers, scissors and glue) and Comcast internet hot spots so students could properly participate in classes while at home.  

Most notably, from April to August, seven Arthur families were provided weekly or biweekly deliveries of groceries, household necessities and diapers. 

FoCA also received donations from restaurants for pre-cooked meals for families, and neighbors donated household items, food and baby supplies. We even partnered with Shiloh Baptist Church parishioners to donate grocery boxes to Arthur families. And then there’s the books -- a massive number of books for kids of all ages were handed out to families.

The most special part of this was that so many of those who were involved in these efforts were not directly part of Chester Arthur -- instead, they were friends and neighbors from the larger community. At a time like this, it has been especially heartwarming to see the neighborhood coming together.

Suggestions or Comments?

We couldn't do any of this without the volunteer and financial support of our great neighborhood. It takes a village and we're lucky to have such a diverse community with many different resources to bring to the table to invest in our school and our neighborhood as a whole. If you've have suggestions or would like to get involved with the Friends of Chester Arthur Elementary, please send us a note below!

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