NORTHAMPTON — The Northampton Education Foundation typically specializes in doing good for children, but on Saturday they’re offering an adult prom for all those who wish to be kids again for a night.
“We’re not trying to make money on this one,” said Jason Berg, president of the non-profit, referencing the annual fundraising events. “We’re just trying to say thank you.”
The foundation has no full-time staff and uses fundraising efforts and endowments to award grants to the city’s schools.
Saturday’s event, referred to as a “re-prom,” also celebrates NEF’s 25th birthday. It takes place at the VFW in Florence from 7:30 to 11 p.m. Tickets cost $25, which include dancing to the Mike Hooker Experience, a performance from the Northamptones and snacks from Seth Mias catering.
Berg said the organization began in the 1990s as a means to fill budget gaps.
“It was the first time schools started to be less funded and we started losing programs,” he said. “It was kind of our way of addressing what was being lost at the schools.”
Since 1991, NEF has awarded more than 100 grants, totaling over $500,000. Last year, Berg said, it awarded about $130,000 to Northampton’s schools in the form of small grants and also larger endowments.
Projects like the outdoor garden program, which began with small grants awarded to Jackson Street School and grew into a larger system-wide endowment grant for all four of the city’s elementary schools, exemplify the non-profit’s work.
“It would be hard to go through the Northampton school system and not be affected by one of our grants,” Berg said.
Mary Bates, a first-grade teacher at Jackson Street and coordinator on the grant, said the $75,000 enabled the elementary schools to build gardens for students to learn in. They’re now used throughout the curriculum from science to poetry, she said.
Bates said the garden program shows students how to care for plants — their food — from seed to edible vegetable.
“If you learn about a plant part or how plants grow from a book, that’s one thing,” she said. “But if you actually go out and plant the seed and take care of it, you’re very much involved in that process. It’s multisensory, and it’s accessible for all students, all ranges of learners.”
It also fosters healthy nutritional outlook and critical thinking skills, as students can pose a question and find the answers themselves in the plants in front of them.
“The children learn to become stewards of the earth and to take care of our natural resources and the environment,” she said. “This is where we live and our resources are finite.”
All of this, she said, would not possibly have been funded by the district’s tight budget.
“(NEF has) been very supportive and without them this program would not be here,” she said.
Other grants have gone to a hands-on science curriculum and in-school environmental labs developed by the Hitchcock Center for the Environment; creation of a Northampton High School FirstRobotic Team, and a multi-school tile mural installation project based on a study of the history, flora, and fauna of Childs Park.
Amanda Drane can be contacted at adrane@gazettenet.com.