A local, private foundation is credited for improved test scores and go-on rates in a rural North Idaho school district, Idaho Education News reports. Over the past 13 years, the Panhandle Alliance for Education, an independent, community-based foundation, has strictly focused its funds on helping the Lake Pend Oreille School district. The foundation, formed in 2002, sponsors an annual golf tournament and other fundraisers, and has built up an endowment of $3.5 million. The endowment provides $200,000 a year to the school district, EdNews reports, and the foundation adds money from fundraising events to put close to $500,000 into the district every year. The money has gone to academic programs, hiring a college guidance counselor for the district, direct grants to teachers for classroom programs and equipment, and more.

In 2015, 83 percent of graduating seniors in the district planned on going to some sort of secondary school; before the foundation hired the counselor, only 50 percent of seniors went on to college. The foundation was modeled after a similar one in Seattle. “What we are doing is not really unique, what is unique is that a small town in Idaho is able to pull this off,” said Marcia Wilson, the foundation’s executive director. “If every school district had a foundation like this, our problems with education in Idaho would be a thing of the past.” EdNews reporter Brandon Brown has a full report here.