APS Foundation working to expand its reach, impact

The Aurora Public Schools Foundation is on a mission to share its mission and expand its reach.
Established in 2019, just before the pandemic hit, the nonprofit organization has been sharing its resources in the form of classroom grants for teachers, $10,500 worth provided through 46 grants thus far, helping teachers do things for students they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. Now the 10-member board is hoping to raise the bar of awareness and impact in order to help support the pending outcomes of the district’s strategic plan.
“Our main goal is to support the school district and its operations, based upon what the administration and the school board decide,” explained Andrew Ostdiek, the board’s president. “We wanted to create something that people could choose to support financially in a way that is going to lessen the burden on the taxpayers since we’re able to do things the district cannot do without an external funding source.”
The challenge now as the foundation enters its fourth year is to communicate the district’s needs with Huskies who graduated years ago, as well as with current and future students and their families.
“That’s a challenge, being able to get people to understand what our objective is and then tie that into what the big goals and mission of the school district are,” Ostdiek said. “We want to be able to tie that together with a bridge, a funding model, that will help accommodate that.”
Tina Oswald, a volunteer who serves as the board’s ex officio executive director, noted that the community has a strong history of philanthropic giving, much of that benefitting students in the form of scholarships, thus the APS Foundation is focused on different goals.
“There are other things to be done,” she said. “Hopefully with the work being done on the strategic plan, that will give our foundation a little bit of a direction on where we need to focus to have the best impact on our students and the school district, whether it’s a capital campaign project, adding some curriculum, whatever the case may be based on the findings from the strategic plan survey.”
Oswald said she and the board have been pleased with some of the initial efforts to get the foundation up and going, adding that the time is right to take on a more significant role.
“As of right now we’re trying to make the public more aware of who we are and what our purpose is,” she said. “What we’ve been doing is trying to coordinate our efforts with alumni, with A’ROR’N Days coming up, and creating a structured foundation funding model, if you will.”
Pat Phillips, a long-time supporter and member of the Aurora Alumni Association, sees her involvement on the APS Foundation board as a perfect fit.
“We’ve been very supportive of the teachers, usually one or two times a year doing something for them specifically, like bringing in a breakfast meal or doing a coffee run for them,” she said. “I have noticed how appreciative they are when we do that, so that’s something the foundation has started doing that I think is very worthwhile.
“I’m kind of the oldest volunteer liaison because I’ve been with the alumni association for years,” Phillips continued. “There are so many things that we both do that support the schools and it makes sense to work together in different ways.”
The Friday night concert on the square during A’ROR’N Days is one of those joint ventures, along the tours of the school offered that same weekend.
“We had students help lead those tours and it’s been fun to hear those stories, just listening to alumni talk about when they were walking those same halls,” Oswald said. “Part of working with the alumni association is to build those relationships with alumni and have them engaged and involved in our students’ learning today, so I think that’s a big piece of it as well.”
From her perspective as an Aurora grad who has watched her own children go through the school system, as well as serving as a substitute teacher, Oswald said the community sees the school differently than what the staff or students do.
“When the community sees the school they’re seeing the gym, the theater, the football field,” she said. “They’re seeing those things, but they’re not seeing the classrooms or the hallways. My perspective was way different before I started subbing, that’s for sure.”
Phillips agreed, and said tours during  A’ROR’N Days can and should be about more than a trip down memory lane.
“A’ROR’N Days is so important because so many of the alumni come back for that and they are seeing the school, but they’re also seeing the needs of the school,” she said. “We take very good care of the schools, but there’s a time limit as to how long it can last.”
Addressing that topic could well be part of a strategic plan, which the school board discussed at length during Monday during its annual retreat.
“The biggest thing is the strategic plan,” Ostdiek said. “A lot of capital projects that have been discussed are all dependent on the results of the strategic planning session that Jody (Phillips) and the board are working on. Once we know that, we’ll be able to kind of kick those off in coordination with the stakeholders that are driving those.”
Oswald noted that the Aurora Public Schools Foundation is one of the smaller entities of its kind in Nebraska, and that it started differently than some of the others have.
“A lot of times when educational foundations are formed they have some seed money, or a donor who has come forward saying they want to contribute this much money designated for a project,” she said. “We’re almost working backwards from that. We have projects that people are interested in, but then we’re going to have to find the cash for it, or find out if the community is going to support it based on property taxes. So it really does teeter on that strategic plan a lot.”
The APS Foundation, which is affiliated with the National Association of Education Foundations and the Nebraska Association of Public School Foundations, currently has a 10-member board, though the bylaws allow for as many as 15 members. Anyone interested in serving a three-year term on a board that meets once every other month, is encouraged to contact Ostdiek or Oswald.
“It’s not a huge time commitment, but it is a commitment to the students and to the school district,” Oswald concluded.
Current board members include Andrew Ostdiek, Pat Phillips, Dixie Ziegler, Sue Mitchell, Kim Quandt, Raychel Eckhardt, Paul Graham, Rick Epp, Steve Anderson, Cyndi Muilenburg and Jody Phillips.