To raise awareness, the Vicksburg United Way campaign has entered in to a challenge with the Gull Lake United Way campaign, according to Laura Howard, Vicksburg’s chairperson. The contest to raise the most funds for each community will have an extra benefit for the winning team she explained.
Based upon a rather complicated scoring mechanism to determine the winning community, there will be an extra $1,000 awarded to the school district to use for a program area that is unique and lacks funding. If Vicksburg wins, Superintendent Charlie Glaes has determined the grant would go to funding the STEAM startup program at Indian Lake School.
A Project Lead the Way (PLTW) program through KRESA has begun at Indian Lake Elementary School in Jake Biernacki’s art class. In this classroom, students he works with will be exposed to the visual arts in companion with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The course work is called STEAM and teaches children creative problem solving through application of the many facets of the STEAM program. The students need more iPads to have in use at any one time. If Vicksburg’s United Way is successful in its challenge to Gull Lake, the $1,000 will buy three more devices and a case or two.
Vicksburg’s campaign raised $34,000 in 2014. The challenge with Gull Lake will be to increase the percentage of new businesses contributing, the percent of new donors, and the dollars raised year-over-year according to Howard. Her counterpart, Chris Tracy, has his committee plotting and planning, so Howard is urging her group composed of Travis Cree, Danna Downing, Gen Landtroop, Carol Lohman, Sue Moore, Tim Moore, and Tonya Nash, to get moving.