Two new Blue Valley initiatives targeting music inclusion and mental health awareness received a financial boost last week.
The Blue Valley Educational Foundation on Thursday agreed to put $15,000 in grant funding toward bringing suicide prevention speaker Kevin Hines to Blue Valley High.
At the same event, district leaders agreed to fund an upgrade in inventory for the district’s “Band Together” program — which provides instruments for music students who cannot afford their own.
The proposals came as part of the Women’s Giving Circle event
- Every spring and fall, the Women’s Giving Circle — an event hosted by the foundation — awards a $15,000 grant to a school program requesting financial support.
- Members of the Blue Valley Educational Foundation hear proposals from school faculty hoping to implement something new in a specific school, department or grade level.
- The grants come from donations pooled by members of the foundation.
- “Each time I think it gets a little bit better and better, and it’s a great opportunity for us to hear the teachers’ innovation and what they would like to deploy within our schools,” said Blue Valley Educational Foundation President Katie Bruels. “I’m always excited to see it kind of come to fruition.”
Kevin Hines spoke at Blue Valley high schools before
- In 2000, Hines survived a suicide attempt after a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California.
- His story garnered attention from the media, and he has since used his platform to become a motivational speaker.
- Hines visited all five high schools to share his message in 2015, at which time Blue Valley High teacher Candy Moore — who proposed the idea to bring him back — said his message greatly impacted students and staff alike.
- “Counselors in our school district do an amazing job every single year — they go into classrooms and they teach lessons on suicide prevention and by no means is what I’m asking for a replacement,” Moore said. “But the day that I listened to him speak to two different high schools, it made a huge impact on me. Once you hear the message, you just can’t unhear it.”
The district will support expansion of “Band Together”
- Support for setting grant funding toward expansion of the “Band Together” program also ran high, with attendees giving it nearly as many votes as the mental health programming.
- “Band Together” aims to lend extra band or strings instruments for students from any of the district’s elementary or middle schools who cannot afford to rent their own.
- Adam Lundine, district coordinator for Blue Valley’s performing arts program, said enrollment in music programs has steadily grown over the past few years — leading to more demand for instrument rentals across the district. Lundine requested nearly $15,000 for expansion of the program.
- After finding the ‘Band Together’ proposal and the Kevin Hines proposal came so close together in votes from event attendees, Superintendent Tonya Merrigan — who attended the event — agreed to find district funding, perhaps out of the capital outlay program, for the proposal.
- “It’s expensive to be able to rent an instrument and not every family can afford to do that,” Lundine said. “I believe that every student should have access to the gift of music. We’re hoping to bridge that gap as much as we can through this process.”
Go deeper: New Blue Valley auto tech ‘studio’ space wins $15K grant
