At the Aug. 18 board meeting, Dan Koyn, a District 65 school social worker, presented a proposal for a private, nonprofit pilot fund to provide short-term financial assistance to families in need, starting at King Arts.

Koyn said the idea originated with local Mennonite and church partners and that the pilot would operate using private (non-tax) dollars. He described a proposed initial seed of about $9,000 and said the organization would be set up with standard IRS nonprofit protocols. Social workers at King Arts and the district CARES team would confidentially request targeted gift cards for families experiencing housing instability, food insecurity or other urgent needs, Koyn said.

Koyn described the intent as rapid, low-bureaucracy assistance: social workers would request an amount and the partner organization would send an electronic gift card to the CARES team, which would forward it to the family without disclosing identities broadly. Koyn suggested a roughly $1,000-a-year cap per family to protect against overreliance and said the pilot could scale to other schools if fundraising and results supported expansion. He asked the board whether it felt comfortable with the district beginning the pilot at King Arts and returning with a spring report.

Board members and staff discussed coordination among social workers and scaling the model; staff pointed to existing CARES-team meetings and district social-work coordination practices and welcomed the proposal as a tool to support vulnerable families. No formal board vote occurred; staff described the plan as a pilot and asked for board comfort with beginning at King Arts.