The Webster City Community School Foundation — Tim Anderson, Joyce Ostebee, Jerita Nelson, Alyssa Schwering and Heidi Tesdahl — labor to make the education experience in the Webster City Community School District better.

But they labor in the background, focused on goals that vary; a course may need a book that can supplement learning, or a teacher may need specialized equipment to help balance the learning experience in the classroom.

This is where the Webster City Community School Foundation is critical.

“They have supported us … for the whole district iPad, like sleeves or covers,” said foundation board member Jerita Nelson, a retired teacher. “Books for classrooms to update libraries. School of the Wild is a fifth-grade program. They get to spend four days outside. So that was a really cool project and that’s still sustained and going forward.”

Support is administered through grant applications, which go through the school district.

“The foundation reviews (projects) we know are supported by the district because it gets signed off on before it comes to us,” said Anderson, the foundation board president.

Schwering, foundation board treasurer, said, We are “trying to be aligned with the district and talk to the new superintendent (Matt Berninghaus) and get on board with how we can support what they’re doing and how we can communicate better, for the process of the grants being applied for goes through the district to come to us. And so that makes sure that they’re in alignment with what the district has outlined for the classroom, but that we can support it in ways that maybe go beyond what the district does.”

Anderson is passionate about the foundation’s work and grateful to its founders.

“Back in 1993 when this was started, just to have somebody with the foresight to start a foundation that we could continue to grow.”

The foundation is funded mainly through gifts, he said.

“We don’t actively fundraise,” he said. “We have been graciously given some gifts from benefactors in their wills. And sometimes we get some annual gifts from people that are aware of the foundation.

“We’re here to support the whole district and all of the students and to just kind of enhance what the district is already doing, enhancing their goals. We’re all in this together and they’re all our kids,” he said.

Nelson added, “I think just collaborating with the district and being able to fund some of those things that the district isn’t able to support, in looking at the new and innovative projects that teachers want to do in the classroom.”

Anderson finished, “We would want the community to know we are all volunteers doing this. We plan on being here in perpetuity.”