A Message from Jay Roscup

The library is always in support of education. It is for this reason, I am sharing this message from Community Schools Director, Jay Roscup.

We are launching the Community Schools Fund virtually.  It had been my hope to have this fund in place before the next fiscal crisis threatened the security of opportunity for our young people.  I did not get that done in time.  Now we must position supports for recovery.   Community Schools is about gathering and harnessing resources.  I am writing to ask for an hour of your time to learn more about this fund and to ask you to consider investing in the youth of Wayne County by establishing an endowment that will mature in time to help us recover from this crisis and endure to support the next group of young people through other future challenges.

The Community Schools Fund will make sure that basic needs of youth are certainly met, and that broader needs like college and career exploration, social emotional support, art, enrichment, and broad arrays of positive experiences that form the foundation of a lifetime are possible for all young people. 

We are hosting the same launch event at three times:

11:00am  June 15^th

1:00pm   June 17^th

6:00pm   June 17^th 

And you can sign up for all of them right here–  bit.ly/csfundlaunch

You can also learn more by visiting:  www.communityschoolsfund.org

Now is the time to invest in the young people of Wayne County, and now is the time to invest FOR the people of Wayne County. The Rochester Area Community Foundation will manage this fund as part of the Wayne County Community Endowment and as stocks recover, our families and youth will have their recovery funded as well.

We can take donations now and they can be focused towards a Wayne County School District of your choice.  Donate at the www.communityschoolsfund.org website.  Follow directions to focus 90% of your gift towards your school.   Our goal is to reach $25,000 in the fund by the end of June and because of a few dedicated individuals, that remains possible.  We will only start to provide grants after the fund has reached the $1,000,000  mark so that this fund will always exist for our kids.

There are crisis relief funds available locally, too.  If you would like to learn more about Community Schools but prefer to focus any donation to immediate relief, please e-mail Sara or Jonathon from the RACF and they can explain how local dollars will stay here to help our community in this time of crisis.  Sara Bukowiec  is available at sbukowiec@RACF.org and Jonathan Hoose  is available at jhoose@RACF.org.  These great guides are very dedicated to our community and I encourage you to ask them questions about the Crisis Fund (help now) or the Community Schools Fund (help forever). 

I want to be clear—a donation to the Community Schools Fund will not help young people right away—the crisis fund can do that– but after all of the stimulus is gone and the crisis funds are spent and our communities are still picking up the pieces—the Community Schools Fund will be there permanently  to make sure our young people have every possible opportunity to thrive. 

Hope to see you virtually at one of our launch events.  Please e-mail jroscup@flxcommunityschools.org with questions.