Clarke County Education Foundation

Brief History and Activities of the CCEF, and its Environment

The County
Clarke County, VA, has a population of about 13,000, 65 miles northwest of Washington, DC, and is located in the northern tip of Virginia, with Loudoun and Fairfax Counties to the east and Frederick County to west – its northern border is with West Virginia. The County’s economy is primarily agricultural and its annual budget is $38 million, of which the public schools account for $20 million. The County raises most of its money from real estate taxes, at a rate of 45 cents per hundred, scheduled to rise over the next three years by 12 cents to pay in part for a new high school at $33 million, the County’s largest expenditure ever, and agonizing to citizens, one third of whom are at poverty level.

The Schools
The Clarke County Public Schools have about 2,000 students, distributed between one primary school, two grade schools and one 800 student high school. Traditionally, expectations for many children in this farming community were that they would return to the farm or to local jobs. Global and local economic change have virtually eliminated many of the traditional jobs in the community, and the new jobs available in the northern Virginia suburbs increasingly demand both much higher average performance at high school graduation and additional technical education. Moreover, teacher salaries in the suburban counties to Clarke’s east are often 25-50% higher making it hard to attract and retain experienced teachers. The Schools have adopted an aggressive posture with regard to helping all the community’s children compete successfully in this very different environment with drastically changing entry requirements.

The Foundation
The Clarke County Education Foundation was founded by parents in 1991, involved a local banker, John Hudson, and obtained its tax-exemption in 1993. In 1996 a local dairy farmer, John Hardesty Jr., became involved, and in that year Dr. Eleanor Smalley became Superintendent of the Clarke County Public Schools. Mr. Hardesty, Dr. Smalley, and Mr. Hudson and other newly-added board members fanned out to generate political and financial contacts.

Major projects and endowments began to be developed. When the refurbishing of the middle school’s (former high school) 50-year old auditorium, the county’s largest, was sliced from the public budget, an alumna was approached and provided $250,000 to the Foundation to carry out the project. Another alumnus provided a $110,000 scholarship endowment based on his experience working with the Foundation’s president on an athletic field gift. A local foundation made a seed gift of a $50,000 endowment.   In 1999 a friend, influenced by the Superintendent’s creative work, gave a $425,000 endowment for innovative science activities. Two local women combined to give a $165,000 endowment to provide teachers with special materials every year.

In 1998, the over-crowded public schools were unable to find space for additional alternative education and vocational programs to help in their goal of reducing high school drop-out rates. The Foundation acquired the gift of a 5,200 sq. ft. commercial building in downtown Berryville and currently leases it to the schools for $2400 a year. The high school drop-out rate has now been reduced to one of the lowest in Virginia, at less than half of one percent.

In that same year, the Foundation began soliciting broader public support through an annual Gala dinner and auction. Gala proceeds through 2009 total over $428,000 towards support for teacher mini-grants and other services.

The Foundation sponsors a Dictionary Project that places a dictionary in the hands of every third grader in public and private schools in Clarke County (in cooperation with the Clarke County Library). Additionally, there are numerous funds to support various programs and projects within the CCPS system including Auditorium fund, Roots and Shoots, IB/AP financial assistance, Bridges, science camps, Elementary Playground, Elementary BookFest and athletic team grants.

In addition to the local public, the Foundation began recruiting an Advisory Board to help us broaden our student and faculty opportunities here and abroad, including exchanges at both levels, conferences, study opportunities, etc.   Through friends and common interests, we recruited Dr. Gustav Born, Director of the William Harvey Research Institute at the Royal London School of Medicine, Lorie Karnath, Chair of the Advisory Board of the Dahlem Konferenzen in Berlin, Dr. Terry Sharrer, Curator of the Division of Medicine at the Smithsonian Institution, et al.

In November 2005, a very special two-day Science Summit was planned with the Superintendent to bring together students from Clarke County High School with Nobel laureates, professors, and politicians around the subject of “Science and Creative Thinking”. Our Advisory Board recruited participants including Dr. Christoph V. Rohr, the Chairman of the German Institute for Market Economy and Competitiveness, Sir Harry Kroto (Nobel in Chemistry, 1996), Sir John Maddox (Editor of Nature), Dr. Bengt Norden (Chair of the Chemistry Section of the Royal Swedish Academy), Dr. Jerome Karle (Nobel for Chemistry, 1985) and others. We partnered with Project Hope, the international health charity, which has a large conference center at historic Carter Hall in Clarke County, and our Congressman, Frank Wolf, who has oversight responsibilities for appropriations to the National Institutes of Health, to organize the event. Students participated in all the sessions and were carefully mixed with the leadership participants at discussion lunches.   The opportunity for students in a rural county interested in science and math to sit down with Nobel laureates and research leaders from a number of countries caused tremendous excitement among students and faculty.

We believe that excellent public education can occur even in small rural counties without huge resources, and we believe that every child can achieve at high levels, but we think it takes a combination of both the traditional public support as well as of private support and interest to make this happen.

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