Closing the Classroom Gap: Empowering Educators Through Community and Grant Support with Jennifer Burton

0:01John Lee Dumas:Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today, we'll be breaking down how to close the classroom gap, empowering educators through community and grant support. To drop these value bombs, I brought Jennifer Burton in the EO Fire Studios. Jennifer is the Executive Director of the Northwest ISD Educational Foundation, championing teacher support, classroom resources, and community investment to close funding gaps and enrich student learning experiences across the district. And today we talk about why teacher support matters, the foundation's mission, beyond tax dollars, impact in action, looking ahead and oh, so much more.

0:40John Lee Dumas:And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Jennifer and our sponsors. Fire Nation, meet Hutworks, the number one boutique fitness franchise with 850 plus locations. They pioneered virtual workouts inside infrared saunas with recurring membership revenue, a low labor high tech model in a proven franchise system, entrepreneurs gain a scalable business built for growth. Visit hotworks.net slash franchising to learn more. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial, plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more.

1:22John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com. Jennifer, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Fire Nation, thank you so much for having me today. I'm so excited to be with you. And you know, I think that many, many people believe that maybe being successful or gaining success is hard and keeping that success is easy. And I actually think that it's opposite. I think that being successful is a choice. And if you're willing to make the sacrifices, maybe that others aren't, and then set some goals and work really hard, you can gain success.

2:03I think keeping that success is just harder.

2:06John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, we have a great conversation today coming up with Jennifer all around closing the classroom gap because we're empowering educators through what? Community and grant support. And I want to start by just talking about why, Jennifer, like why teacher support matters? Why is supporting teachers so critical? And specifically, how do classroom funding gaps, how do they affect the students, the educators, and just the school as a whole? Yeah, absolutely. That's a fabulous question. Number one, I think educators are the VIPs, right? Like they're the ones that are bringing up our future ready students.

2:42And in the state of Texas, I think public education sometimes gets left behind. I think that we have some leaders in our community and just across the board that not necessarily don't value education, but they don't understand the hard work that takes place in the classroom that supports those students. And for us, what we learned is that our educators were spending on the very, very low end$750 of their own money to fill those gaps in their classroom. whether that was supplies, whether that was snacks, whatever it was, it was to help increase the success and productivity of those students. And, you know, I just think we should be keeping those dollars in our educators' pockets.

3:23And so that's really one of our main focuses through Northwest ISD Education Foundation. We want to make sure that we're engaging our community so that we can encourage those future-ready students and support our educators the best we can so that everyone is successful.

3:37John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, we want everyone successful, not just some of the people, let's be honest here. And I want to talk about your specific foundation's mission, Jennifer, because listen, there's a lot of foundations. Some of them have missions, you know, that are directed towards one area towards another, but what is the mission of Northwest ISD Education Foundation? Sure. Well, the Northwest ISD Education Foundation, our mission is just to be the leading provider of financial support to Northwest ISD. And we have a little bit of a unique setup. We actually are not a part of Northwest ISD. We are just a partner.

4:14We have an MOU with the district that allows us to operate within the district and support the students and the educators. And so we do that in several different ways, mainly through our education grants, so our teaching grants and then our free resource store and library, which is our largest and fastest growing program.

4:35John Lee Dumas:We want to talk about beyond the tax dollars, because I think that a lot of people are just kind of assuming something, but the reality is actually something different. So why do community foundations play such an important role in sustaining education funding beyond what tax dollars can provide? Because I think a lot of people might be like, well, I pay taxes. So aren't we covered in that? Sure. No, that's a great question. And a lot of people get confused and don't understand. So our foundation, all of the funds that we give to the district are raised by my staff and I. We do not receive any taxpayer dollars at all whatsoever.

5:10So everything that we're doing in the classroom to support the teachers and students are private funds that we're getting from our local donors, some of our parents, a lot of our district vendors, construction companies, local community supporters. Those dollars are really important because last year alone, we put$1.5 million back into our school district through the foundation alone.

5:31John Lee Dumas:So let's kind of get a little more deep into that though. Exactly. So when foundations, you know, are existing kind of side by side with organizations and with, you know, governments that are providing some of the tax situations, like how do they work together? How are you seeing like a disconnect happening in some certain areas in your personal experience? Like how can we actually see this in our minds working as a team? Our district specifically sits in a footprint of 234 square miles. So we've got over 35 ,000 students. That's 14 municipalities. So if you can imagine how important it must be that we're really good communicators to all of those municipalities, there are a lot of differing opinions across that 234 square miles.

6:14And there's a lot of diversity as well. So one side of our district might be a little bit more affluent, if you will. And then we have quite a few campuses that are economically disadvantaged. So working with those different municipalities so that they understand where they can get involved and affect change in each of those campuses is very important. And we do that all the time. We work specifically, I'll just give you an example. I live in Justin, Texas, and we work with the Justin, Texas government and their rotary groups to host backpack supply drives, to volunteer in our campuses, and different things like that.

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9:58John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Jennifer, we're back. And as I kind of teased before the break, I want to talk about impact in action. So tell a story. We love stories here at Fire Nation. It makes these things become real, become touchable, become tangible. Share a story of a funded project that transformed a classroom and made like, let's just say a measurable difference in student engagements, something along those lines? These are my favorite. I mean, we just have a portfolio that we could, we could do this all day long. But some of my, let me share two with you.

10:36One, our free resource store and library is something that we just made up. It literally started in a closet. We had a truck pull up and give us a truckload of binders. And we didn't really know what to do with that. So we sent an email to all of our campuses and said, Hey, we've got some free binders if anybody needs them. And that quickly spiraled into a full on retail situation where we have inventory with barcodes, a metric system, store shopping hours. And so we have snack packs, pretty much anything that you could think of that a student or educator might need in the classroom to be successful.

11:13And since inception, I can't tell you how many bus drivers have come and shopped in our store, but also educators that come and shop. Again, I say shop, they get all of these items for free and take snack packs. We had an eighth grade math teacher come in tears and tell us that after providing snacks in his classroom, he saw a measurable increase in test grades. And so for us, we know what that means is that students can't learn if they're hungry, right? And they can only foresee for themselves what's in front of them. So we're trying to support the whole child here so that they can be successful in the classroom.

11:53And that's one of my favorite stories.

11:54John Lee Dumas:You said you have a bunch. You said you have a whole kind of catalog of these. Share a couple more because I mean, to me, like this is what brings these type of stories to life, these type of organizations to life. I'd love to hear a couple more. Yeah. So we have another partner that loves to fund teaching grants. And three years ago, we had a science department at one of our high schools write a grant for their entire cohort to be able to dissect sharks. And we had a sponsor come in and say, oh my gosh, how wild would that be? Can we be a part of it? And the science teachers were totally on board, loved that the donors wanted to come and see these grants in action.

12:31So this is actually now not even a part of our grant funding process anymore. This donor works directly with the high school to ensure that this project is funded every single year because it is so impactful and cool for our students. And it is now branched out to our other two high schools.

12:48John Lee Dumas:Let's talk about looking ahead because at the end of the day, like we need to be looking into the future, knowing where our impact is gonna be because there's changes that are happening in a lot of different areas. So what are your personal future goals for expanding educator support, for strengthening partnerships between schools in the communities? What do you have on tap, Jennifer? Sure. So last year we launched our new store. We launched our online store, which brings our classroom supplies and inventory right to our educators where they need it. So it makes it easy for them in real time to shop online and we ship items to them from our location.

13:22And we also have a mobile store that goes out and brings resources to one out of our 37 campuses that we have. I think for us, sustaining that success is really important. Last year alone, we saved educators$936 ,000. We kept that money in their pocket by offering store resources to them. And this is wild. That's over 313 ,000 individual unique items that we gave as resources to our district. So our goal is to sustain that, right? It costs$25 ,000 a month for us to run the store successfully. and that's, if I have to be honest with you, that's what I lose sleep over every night is making sure that we keep this thing funded and sustainable for our teachers.

14:11John Lee Dumas:I mean, 936K in savings, that is measurable impact, Fire Nation. That's powerful. Let's talk about fueling innovation. Like how do things like teaching grants, how does that empower educators to do a few things? Like to bring innovation, to bring creativity, to bring hands-on learning into their classrooms. And hey, maybe there's another story or two here. Offering the grant process to them and the application to them allows them to think outside the box. I think we don't give our educators enough credit. So many of them don't have enough time in the day to be innovative, if you will. So offering them the opportunity to apply for a grant that would bring something like a book vending machine to an elementary school.

14:54That's something that's hugely popular within our district. Um, it's an opportunity for students to work hard in the classroom and earn a coin to go visit the book vending machine on their campus and pick out a book through the vending machine process, um, that they get to keep and read. And so, um, in my mind, I think it's just a great way to incentivize and reward our students.

15:16John Lee Dumas:Jennifer, what's one thing that our listeners can do today to support educators, to help create better opportunities for the next generation? Show up on your campus. If you've got students, we've all been students. If you're not there in your life where you've got kids that are in schools, or maybe you've got grandchildren that are on a campus somewhere, I think showing up as the foundation, we have a lot of competing organizations across the district, whether it's parent-teacher associations or your booster clubs. I think the important thing is, is that we all need to show up for each other and realize that we can all be effective in our own space.

15:55I think our parents and community members just showing up and offering their time would mean more to most than anything.

16:03John Lee Dumas:If Fire Nation wanted to walk away with one thing from everything that you shared here today, I mean, we talked about fueling innovation, impact in action, beyond tax dollars, why teacher support matters. We talked about a lot of things today. What would be the one thing that you would want our listeners to walk away with from our conversation today? Supporting educators is priority. I think if we're putting kids first, which is a mantra here in our district, the only way that we can do that is by supporting our educators. I hear all the time that our educators think it's very important for our kids to walk away and, you know, know math and be successful with literacy and all of the different things.

16:42But the one thing that I always hear consistently time and time again is that we need to raise good humans and that we need to do that in the community so that they're not just educated, but they're good people too. So just keeping that in mind, like our educators have a huge job and they're not just teaching our kids curriculum. They're teaching them how to be future ready students and engaged good humans in our community for the future.

17:07John Lee Dumas:Jennifer, Fire Nation wants to connect with you, wants to learn more about what you have going on. Maybe it wants to maybe do something like that where they live in their neck of the woods. What is the best call to action for our listeners today? Yeah. Best call to action is just get involved in the community. You know, I don't know. I know here in Texas, we have lots of different education foundations, but there's lots of different ways that you can support every type of education institution. I would just say the first step is getting involved and showing up. What if they want to connect with you or your company?

17:37If you want to connect with us, you can find us on all socials at Nef, I support Nef, N-E-F, or you can visit us online at nisdtx.org forward slash Nef.

17:50John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with JB and JLD today, so keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Jennifer in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Jennifer, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks for having me. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Jennifer for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you an entrepreneur on fire with a high ticket offer, but not enough quality leads?

18:23John Lee Dumas:If yes, Nexus Install is your answer. To learn more, email me at john at eofire.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. fire nation meet hot works the number one boutique fitness franchise with 850 plus locations they pioneered virtual workouts inside infrared saunas with recurring membership revenue a low labor high-tech model in a proven franchise system entrepreneurs gain a scalable business built for growth visit hotworks.net slash franchising to learn more stop duct taping your business together high level runs your website your funnels email automation scheduling payments and memberships all in one place.

19:01John Lee Dumas:And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more. Visit highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com.