350 South 700 West, Blackfoot, ID 83221 Phone: 208-785-1890 Fax: 208-785-1884
CURRENT NEWS
Our big news this summer is that the Lillian Vallely School is now fully accredited. Although we have had most of the pieces in place for some time, and we have always had credentialed teachers, we are now officially accredited thanks to the efforts of our Head of School/Chaplain, Ray Boyd, who took us through the process this past year.
School is off to a smooth start this fall.We are again full with a waiting list. We hope that someday, relatively soon, we will have the resources to have enough classrooms and enough teachers to accept every child who wants to attend. We have received a grant from the Steele-Reese Foundation for an Assistant Head of School, whom Ray Boyd, our Head of School/Chaplain, can mentor this year and who can replace Ray as Head of School when Ray retires in the fall of 2010. Ray Boyd will continue on after that as our chaplain, which is a great blessing, as he does a superb job both as a counselor to the students and as a teacher of the Godly Play curriculum, which is an excellent program. We are now in a search process for the right person to be his assistant administrator.
Much was accomplished this past summer, thanks to the efforts of five volunteer teams. They came from St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church in Boulder, Colorado; St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Boise, Idaho; St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Eugene, Oregon; First United Methodist Church in Salt Lake Cty, Utah; and St. John the Baptist Episcopal Cathedral in Spokane, Washington. All of the groups worked to improve our campus, including the dismantling and removing of the old metal barn. Three of the groups taught summer school in the mornings, which was wonderful for our students' ability to retain reading and math skills through the summer. The sessions each had an average of 60% of our students in attendance, including the first session, which was the week after school was out in June!
This September, Ms. Ethel Sickert from Arizona will be making her seventeenth trip to the school to do another week-long Indian flute workshop, which she does twice a year. All of the students learn to play the Indian flute.Between her visits, their music teacher, Emily Abercrombie, reviews what they have learned. We are also grateful to LaGrand Coby, father of one of our students, who volunteers his time to teach the students the Indian dances. Their talented Shoshone language teacher, Angelita Myoshi, is back teaching the students the Shoshone language. We believe that knowing their own culture is an important part of their curriculum.
We are grateful to each of you who have donated, both with monetary gifts and with your time and talent, to this effort at educating and improving the lives of these Shoshone-Bannock children over the past eleven and one-half years of the school's existence. It costs approximately $20,000 each month year around to operate the school. In addition to operating expenses, we need funds for buildings, computers, new vans, etc. We cannot charge tuition, because most of the students' families would be unable to pay it. We are totally dependent upon gifts and grants from organizations and individuals who care about these children.
A partial list of the organizations, that have helped us with operating and capital expenses this past year, includes the CHC Foundation, The Good Works Institute, the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation and various funds in the Idaho Community Foundation, including the Gladys E. Langroise Advised Fund, all of which are Idaho organizations, and Christ Church Cathedral of Indianapolis, Indiana, the Ruth Danley and William Enoch Moore Charitable Trust of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the Steele-Reese Foundation of New York, New York. We are grateful to each of them as well as many churches and other organizations.
Thank you for visiting our web site.We invite you to check our web site in October for an announcement about an on-line auction of a fabulous trip to England and France, the gift of two generous school supporters who live in England.
We also invite you to visit our school campus in eastern Idaho. It is on a small farm among the alfalfa and potato fields, just across the Blackfoot River from the Fort Hall Reservation. If you would like to get directions to the school, learn more about the school or receive our newsletter, we can be reached at 208-785-1890.Our mailing address is:
Lillian Vallely School
P.O. Box 790
Blackfoot, ID 83221
Please Help Us Save Coupons!
The school collects Boxtops4education coupons, a small coupon found on brands such as Kleenex, Ziplock Bags, Yoplait Yogurt, and most General Mills products. These tiny coupons, when sent in by the school, are worth 10 cents each in cash. We use this money to fund the library and library programs such as Accelerated Reading tests, books, and reading incentives. Collection dates are October and February but we collect them year round. Even though these are only 10 cents each, they are a great source of income when many people save them for us. Thank You
