Arcadia Educational Foundation Up for $500,000 in Chase Community Giving Contest on Facebook

The Arcadia Educational Foundation (AEF), an organization that has already raised more than $650,000 this past year, could add to its impressive fund-raising haul with the help of the community. 

Voting for Round 2 in the Chase Community Giving Contest began Wednesday night and already AEF--which won $25,000 in Round 1 of the contest--is near the top of the leaderboard thanks to a grassroots effort led by students, parents and community members.

“We are mass mobilizing students at the high school through e-mails and Facebook events and word of mouth,” student Jon Ma told Patch. “Parents were notified via a phone blast [Wednesday] about this wonderful opportunity. It'll be the job of students and parents to really push and spread the word on this $500,000 opportunity to our community.”

Brenda Stimpson, parent of a 7th-grader at and one of the founders of the "Save Arcadia Schools" Facebook page, has a more specific request for Arcadians.

"We are asking people to commit to asking at least 5 people they know to vote for AEF in this program," Stimpson said. "It only costs a few seconds of time and could reap huge benefits for Arcadia."

in March and the district is facing a $349 per student reduction, roughly $3.1 million overall, in funding. Governor Jerry Brown’s recently revised budget, which could pump $3 billion back into education, may look on its face likely to cure the budget woes but that is not necessarily the case, according to AUSD Superintendent Dr. Joel Shawn.

“What I can say at this point is that what Governor Brown has proposed for K-12 education may easily be misinterpreted to add significant new "spendable" revenue to schools. Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case,” Shawn wrote Tuesday, May 17, on his blog. “A guiding principal in his proposal continues to be an extension of taxes and fees that will expire at the end of June 2011 without action of the Legislature (or a vote of the people which will not happen in time for next year's budget).”

According to Shawn, AUSD could be cut an additional $3 million dollars, which is the equivalent of 44 teachers, if Brown’s tax extensions do not pass.

AEF plans to gift all the money it receives to AUSD. So far, the organization's fund-raising efforts have saved nine teacher positions.

By clicking here you can vote for AEF in the Chase Community Giving contest. You need a Facebook account to vote.

If AEF finishes in the top 25—as of noon Thursday it’s in second place—it will be considered a winner of Round 2 and will get a share of $2.5 million donated by Chase.

Chase's Advisory Board will then select five Round 2 winning charities to present their “Big Ideas”  to the board. The advisory board will pick one "Big Idea" as its favorite and the winning charity will be rewarded with another $200,000. Chase will also donate an additional $300,000 in grants to be allocated in varying amounts to the Round 2 charities selected by the advisory board, according to the official rules of the contest.

Voting for Round 2 ends May 25.