A Colorado town rallies to save its schools

In his spare time, high school junior Eric McIntyre finds himself heavily preoccupied with school work. Saving his school, that is.

He and a classmate recently created poorschool.com, a website built to lend support to their penniless district. In addition to posting news reports and providing a forum for community opinions, the site has raised hundreds of dollars from T-shirt sales and donations.

"Raising funds is just our way of trying to help," says co-creator Mitch Lubbers, a junior at Silver Creek High School.

The students' altruistic endeavor is characteristic of efforts around the community to pitch in as the St. Vrain Valley School District confronts a gaping $13.8 million budget shortfall. But the money collections here are hardly unique. In many school districts across the US students, parents, and community organizations have far more pressing fundraising concerns on their minds than passing around the annual signup sheet for girl scout cookies.

As states clip education budgets to cope with falling tax revenues and rising deficits, residents across the country are devising ingenious ways to save schools:

• In Michigan, the nonprofit East Lansing Educational Foundation is trying to bridge a $3.8 million budget deficit by creating gift registries for schools on the district's website.

• This week, Muskogee, Okla., resident Penny Kampf hosted a 24-hour telethon on a cable channel in an attempt to raise $2 million for local schools.

• Auto dealers in Conejo Valley, Calif., pledged to give $250,000 to six schools by donating $10 from each car sold.

Yet the rescue effort has been particularly impassioned and unusual in Colorado's St. Vrain Valley, a community at the toe of the Rockies where households range from the affluent to low-income.

For a start, even though the financial crisis has been blamed on mismanagement by district officials, the community has been nothing but generous in its attempts to help schools in the area.

True, much of the fundraising is a matter of necessity since schools have had to freeze purchases of basic supplies such as copy paper and ink. The community, though, is digging deep in the post-gift giving season to ensure students are cushioned from the worst effects of the budget cuts.

"What we really wanted to show teachers is that we are behind the school, and that we want to help make it a little less painful for them," says Merrill Bohaning, whose son attends Prairie Ridge Elementary School in nearby Firestone, which is part of the school district.

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