Community Arts Schools and Conservatories
ACHF Arts Education
The Itasca Orchestra and Strings Program will increase the amount of tuition tax credit loans in its pass-through account at the Grand Rapids Community Foundation. The funds in this account loan tuition to low-income families. The family files an education tax credit, which increases their refund, and the loan is paid back to the Foundation. The funds are then in place for next year for qualifying low-income families. The number of students eligible for financial assistance will increase by 23% (5 students). As a means of evaluating our Minnesota Department of Revenue tuition-tax-credit loan program via a pass-through account at the Grand Rapids Area Community Foundation, we reviewed applications for the past 5 years. There have been situations where parents did not earn enough to pay off the loan as part of their tax refund. As a result, we now can determine the best candidates for the program. Also we needed to move parents for whom the tuition-tax-credit program was not working to 1/2 tuition scholarships budgeted by us. We raised the amount budgeted by 18%. 2: The Itasca Orchestra and Strings Program staff aided by a facilitator will continue to develop a curriculum that reaches a broad spectrum of students. The evaluation outcome is the completion of the curriculum.
Because there were fewer requests, the amount of money made available for half priced tuition scholarships was raised 18% as opposed to the proposed 23%. 2: The Itasca Orchestra and Strings Program now has a curriculum that states goals for each of its four student orchestras.
Other, local or private