CFC Awards Grant to Wright Elementary School for Library Improvements

The Community Finance Corporation awarded a $25,000 grant to John B. Wright Elementary School to improve the school’s library.

The Tucson Unified School District school serves about 450 students in kindergarten through fifth grade in a low-income area of midtown Tucson that’s home to a multitude of immigrant and refugee cultures. Last year, the third-grade class had a range of 13 different languages spoken by the children of families from not only neighboring Mexico but also from far-flung locales such as Somalia, Syria and Afghanistan. 

Roughly 70% of the residential properties in the school’s attendance area are rentals, so there’s a regular churn as students move in and out of the neighborhood. It’s not unusual for a student’s family to be facing homelessness at some point during the school year.

“We have to support our kids' social and emotional learning,” Principal Brenda Encinas said. “We have a hierarchy of needs and we need to make sure that we meet the kids’ needs first before they can be ready to learn.” 

That means the school not only provides free breakfast and lunch to all students, but runs a pop-up food pantry with items that families can take home, as well as a shoe and clothing bank for kids.

The library improvements include a makeover of the library with new bookshelves, rugs, curtains and bright-colored, kid-sized couches and chairs where students can sit and read. 

“We want them to love reading and to provide a space for them, especially when at home sometimes all they do is be on a device,” Encinas said. “We want to engage them with books. We want them to have a love of reading.”

The CFC grant also funded a new computer station where kids can not only browse the library’s offerings but also do research for class assignments. Encinas hopes to add instruction in software coding in the future.

The technology upgrade also includes a new “smart board”—basically, a big-screen TV with a built-in touchscreen— that’s ideal for read-aloud sessions for kids, presentations to parents and staff training for teachers. Encinas foresees having authors do Zoom sessions as well.

“Many of these kids live in tough circumstances,” CFC Board member Kathleen Perkins said. “The library might be the best place they visit all day.”

In previous years, CFC has provided more than $400,000 in grants to the school, first built in 1949, to assist with deferred maintenance, create murals, install water-harvesting tanks for a garden program and remodel a STEM kitchen where students can prepare the foods they grow.

“The garden helps in so many ways,” Encinas said. “The students not only learn responsibility, but also sharing. It’s just so peaceful to be outside by learning. They look at the plants and they start to wonder and they look at the birds and they start to wonder and ask questions and that's what we want them to do.”

To support programs at Wright Elementary, click here or visit the school’s website.