An review from Dan Koellen, President of the La Follette Board of Visitors, of the Board's great work in 2020.
While the events of 2020 curtailed much of our lives, the BoV has continued to support La Follette High School students, faculty, staff and the broader community. With everyone's collective efforts and commitment we accomplished quite a bit and have exciting plans for 2021.
What we did in 2020:
NeuGen. We were introduced to NeuGen, a health services company located in Madison, at our spring board meeting. In spite of limitations due to COVID, the partner relationship has blossomed with NeuGen employees involved in this year's senior events, plans for events in 2021 and possible participation in Graduation Academy.
Through your generosity we funded the formation of the Graduation Academy, which will be ready when in person instruction starts again, as well as the Communications Dashboard and supplemental supplies for teachers.
The BoV worked with La Follette’s social work team to supply families with gift cards to buy winter clothing and school supplies. We had a generous response and have already helped several La Follette families. Of course, more families need help so keep the gift cards coming in.
The Teacher Support team has been working on implementing a program to supply teachers with supplies that they need. They have been working with FMPS that has a pilot program already running prior to COVID and coordinating with the team that had been doing this at LHS last year.
The Student Support team continues to work with Second Harvest in addressing the food sourcing challenges in the La Follette community. Through a grant, two UW students helped facilitate and coordinate the effort. They have been working on a website and Instagram with resources related to food justice and more.
The Communications Dashboard, a way to manage LHS communications’ effectiveness, was approved and funded. One of our board members, Terrence Jackson, will be installing the system and training LHS in its use.
Over a dozen BoV members contributed videos to the LHS career fair, adding to the diversity of videos available to the students.
The La Follette BoV website was launched. Information about the BoV, what we do, our fundraising, how to join the board and latest news about La Follette is on the site.
The Community Relations team has worked to keep you in touch with what the BoV is doing as well as the latest news from La Follette through our newsletters and news blasts. If you missed a few, take a look at the news archive on our website.
We thank La Follette’s staff, faculty and administration for developing a wonderful working relationship, in true Lancer fashion, and we're looking forward to working together to help the La Follette Community in 2021.