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TR Foundation Completes Grant Cycle and Kicks Off Gym Floor Refurbishment Fundraiser – The Target Range Foundation recently completed the fall cycle of our annual classroom grant program. Funds for this program stem from dividends from our Montana Community Foundation Endowment as well as donations from community and school partners. We are thrilled to have approved over $5,000 to support Target Range school in projects that are needed, but outside the school budget in the 2025/26 school year. We are also excited to kick off this years’ fundraiser to refurbish the gym floors. Please see below for project details:

One-to-One Microscopes for STEM Engagement and Enrichment – Our Junior High Science Curriculum was given a grant to purchase microscopes for all students to access at once. This will give students a chance to be more hands on as they move through labs in science class.

The Fidget Game – Learning through Fun – Our Kindergarten teachers were granted the Fidget Games Shark Tank Bundle, which is an engaging, research-informed educational toolkit designed to promote early literacy and numeracy in students. This toolkit supports students from diverse learning backgrounds and will be used for years to come!

Move, Sit, Learn: The Power of Flexible Seating – Many of our younger grade classrooms have benefitted from offering different seating options to students based on what task and addressing different sensory, physical, and social-emotional needs. Ms. Peers’ grant application would allow her classroom to enjoy the same benefits with wobble stools, stools of various heights, floor cushions, and a moveable teacher chair.

Extended Resource Room: Serving All Learners – The Special Education Team has developed an Extended Resource Room (ERC) for students with needs beyond what our classrooms and resource rooms can meet. Our wonderful teaching team created an inclusive layout to create a specialized environment that allows for learning and close supervision. The Target Range Foundation board was happy to approve some equipment and materials so that this room will serve these students. Equipment included a blackout sensory tent, fidget tools, LED lights, storage baskets, washable rugs, weighted blankets and stuffies, and other safety materials.

Upcoming Fundraiser for Gym Floor Refurbishment – Every year our gym floor is re-finished, but every 5-8 years the floor needs to be sanded down, refinished, and repainted for a total cost of $25,000. The time has come for this costly project and it is outside of the school budget. The administration has reached out to the Foundation to see if we can help raise funds for a new gym. Jeff Crews has worked with a contractor to provide a picture of the new flooring and paint job. This will update our gym and give our TR Tigers a gym they can be proud of for PE, Junior High Sports, concerts, and assemblies. Please reach out if you would like to make a donation or have any questions.

Thank you to all who donated their time and money to invest in our students and community. It is truly amazing what we can do when we come together and support our school. I want to offer a huge ‘thank you’ to our teachers, staff, and administrators. Without their passion and drive, our grant program and fundraising efforts would not be able to provide all these resources to our students.

We hope that everyone has had a fun and full fall season in this beautiful place that we call home. The Target Range Foundation has been busy as well: 

Board Member Changes

We want to offer our heartfelt thanks to Paula Williams for successfully completing two terms on the Board of the Target Range Foundation. She was able to contribute and help us make many connections in the community to further the organization. We appreciate you Paula! 

We would also like to welcome Kammy Meyers as her replacement on the Board. Kammy has been a ‘Target Ranger’ since she was a kid and has a rich and successful career as an educator and administrator in the Missoula County Public School district.

We would also like to welcome Elizabeth Stegmaier as our new School Board Liaison. Elizabeth has been on the School Board for over a year and will provide a significant connection between the two organizations. 

We are always looking to engage individuals in our work at the Target Range Foundation. Please reach out if you have any questions. 

Target Range Outdoor Project – COMPLETE! 

We are proud to say that we successfully raised over $30,000 to help resurface the outdoor basketball courts, replace the hoops, and install an outdoor volleyball net. We posted a few pictures of our students enjoying these new recreational opportunities in this post. This project was made possible by our community including a significant grant from Missoula County’s Rural Grants Program. This is a huge resource for our students and community. 

Fall Grant Cycle Awards

The Target Range Foundation board recently completed their fall grant cycle. We are proud to say that we were able to approve a grant to fund Garmin watches to help in the training process for our Cross Country and Track teams as well as partially fund large outdoor building blocks for the playground. The Building Block project request came from a group of 4th grade students and they will be supplying a portion of the cost through fundraising. The Foundation is proud to partner with the school to make these projects happen. 

Thank you to everyone for your support of the Foundation and all the work done to enhance our school and community. We appreciate you! 

The Target Range Foundation Board met to clean up the playground for a fun spring cleanup. The Foundation raised funds to update the playground. Target Range students were able to pick up any trash accumulated and buried through the winter months, and so the board was able to focus on getting the wood chips back where they belong. It was a great day! 

Our Foundation board is proud to report that we have approved just under $8,400 in grant dollars to be allocated to Target Range School for initiatives outside the school budget to benefit our school and community. This allocation was a $3,000 over what we budgeted for our entire 2023/24 school year. We were able to do this because of the success of last years’ jogathon. We also committed to fundraising for next years’ grant program. We are so proud of our ability to meet these needs that are outside the school budget and thank everyone who has contributed to the Foundation. Here are the grants that were approved for the 2023/24 school year: 

1.  Tents for TR Tigers – A personalized tent with walls for middle school sports and any other event for K-8th. This is a great piece of equipment for school safety, team spirit, and social emotional learning.
2. Bringing STEM to Life – Providing supplemental books and materials to go along with STEM activities in 2^nd grade.  These stories are important for all different learning styles, giving the students a visual, as well as connecting each STEM lesson to literacy.
3. Standing Display Case for Student Artwork – The Foundation offered up to $1000 to fund a permanent fixture display case that will present student’s 3-dimentional artwork.  This display case will protect artwork, offer better viewing, and help students connect to others artwork.
4. Third Grade Flexible Seating – This grant will provide a swivel stool group work station.  This will update and rejuvenate the existing classroom environment into a more modern and innovative space for engaged learning.
5. ROCKing and MineROLLING in the 6^th grade – This grant will provide 10 different rock kits and mineral kits to provide enough materials for students to have a solid learning experience working with and identifying rocks and minerals.
6. Energy Vibes – A 6^th grade STEM education module that will engage students in learning about air flow, wind power, electricity, and circuits.  This will provide hands-on activities of exploration and discovery for students in many years to come.
7. It’s Too Loud in Here – An initiative to provide a rack of noise cancelling headphones for assemblies, concerts, and even specials that students of all ages can access as they walk into these settings. These headphones will benefit grades K-8th. 

As board members of the Target Range Foundation, we are proud to support the school and manage financial gifts from the community. If you are interested in donating to our foundation, I would be happy to discuss any and all opportunities to support the school. The Target Range Foundation was started by caring community members before us, and we feel so much gratitude for all the support our community offers our school. Go Tigers! 

The Target Range Foundation has had a wonderful year! We had the opportunity to approve six teacher grants to fund the following curriculum enhancements to the school:

– Dramatic play equipment for the Kindergarten class
– Tiger Team Building Sports Equipment for the 5th grade
– Drone equipment and technology for our 6 – 8th grade Gifted and Talented program
– Fine Motoring Strengthening Tools to increase handwriting skills in 1st grade
– Tigers Take Flight personalized discs for our physical education program
– A portable stereo and speaker system to benefit the K-8th

Our typical budget is about $5,000 per year, but we had a little more roll over this year and were able to approve $6,700 in grants for the 2022/23 school year. With the help of our newest board member, Alisa , we have enhanced and updated our grant application application and evaluation process to ensure that we are communicating with our applicants effectively and offering full transparency in our grant selection process. Our spring 2023 grant cycle marked the first time we had more grant applications than grant money available and it’s very important to our board to make sure we offer clear and transparent feedback to encourage the creative and thoughtful applications we are getting from our Target Range teachers & staff.

We were also able to lead the efforts for the school’s Jogathon & Color Run and raise a total of $25,000 to go toward the Target Range PTO’s annual budget, spirit shirts for every student, and over $18,000 to sustain the teacher grant program. The board recently voted to move this money into a one year bond to help fund the teacher grant program for next year without a loss of principal. We remain committed to managing private gifts to sustain our support of Target Range Schools for years to come.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or would like to offer a gift of support to the teacher grant program.

Best,

Paige – President
David – Treasurer
Alisa – Secretary
Sharon – School Board Liaison
Paula – Member

The Foundation Board is pleased to sponsor and partner with Boosterthon to host a Jogathon for our Target Range students. We hope to raise $20,000 to go toward the Playground Fundraiser and fund the PTO budget for the year. Target Range students will gather together to gain pledges from their families, neighbors, and friends for every lap they run. The jogathon kickoff is on Oct 4th and the jogathon is on October 15th. Our hope is that this will be a fun way to raise money for our Playground capital campaign. Go Tigers! 

You can read much more about the proposed playground here.

Thanks so much for your help! 

Best, 
Paige

The Target Range Foundation is pleased to announce that we have reviewed and accepted our classroom grants for the 2020/21 school year. We approved a project for the 2nd and 3rd grade classes. Our 2nd grade class received support for their ‘Amazing People in History’ curriculum and the 3rd grade will supplement their study of biology by partnering with the Watershed Education Network to apply their knowledge of stream biology to local Missoula rivers. Our next classroom grant application process will begin in the Fall of 2021. A big ‘thanks’ to all the contributors to the foundation for making this program possible. 

Pictured – 2nd grade students enjoying their new resources.

Our amazing Target Range Principal and the Foundation Board’s Teacher Liaison pose next to one of the new banners purchased to say ‘Thank You’ to our amazing staff as they navigate through the challenges of this pandemic and work to make our school safe and fun! 

We are pleased to announce that we had the opportunity to partner with our Target Range PTO and individual donors to collectively recognize our Target Range Teachers and Staff. We were able to publicly recognize our staff through a banner posted outside the Target Range school. We offered monetary recognition to go toward Target Range Apparel and promote a culture that proclaims we are ‘Target Range Strong.’ 

We also were able to send a personalized and heartfelt ‘Thank You’ to our staff as written below:

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Dear Target Range Teachers & Staff: 

As we head into the second half of our 2020/21 school year, the Target Range Foundation and all of our partners in our community want to say THANK YOU! This year hasn’t been easy on you. You have worked tireless hours to provide our children the best education you can using all avenues available to you. You have worked to find creative new ways to engage our students. You have offered free meals to our student body. You have sanitized our facility so that it sparkles. You have created recess and hallway schedules to ensure limited contact. You have offered technology to remote students with an incredibly fast response rate. You have coordinated and staffed quarantines with a moment’s notice. We see you. We appreciate you. 

As a small token of our appreciation, we would like to offer all the staff and teachers a $35 apparel stipend to go toward the purchase of an item on the school store website. All the details can be coordinated through Mrs. Droessler. This project is funded by the Target Range Foundation, the Target Range PTO, and many individual donors that are listed below. We know this is only a small thanks for all you have done for us and our children, but please know that we are rooting for you! 

In the coming weeks, you will see a banner up at school publicly expressing our ‘thanks’ for all that you have done and will do in the future. Please take pride in knowing that our ‘Target Range Team is Tiger Strong!’

All Our Best, 

Target Range Foundation – Paige Judnich, David Wild, Linda Yovetich, Bob Carter & Paula Williams. 

Target Range PTO – Paula Williams, Meagan Auch, Bethany Morris & Jennifer Meyer

Individual Donors: Grace & Brent Roster, Paige & Marty Judnich, Kelly Polus, Brigette Hendrix, Erin Kautz, Lauren Wilson, Myles Morris, and Melissa Schnee.

Welcome to Paula Williams

Please join me in welcoming Paula Williams to the Target Range School Foundation board of directors. Paula has led our PTO for several years and has three beautiful girls that have attended or currently attend Target Range Schools. Paula has a strong knowledge and familiarity with our Target Range parents, teachers, and staff. I am confident that she will do amazing things for our organization and I am so grateful to her for volunteering to join our board!