The Ed Op Fund is board of trustees is looking to raise enough money to support a fifth grade trip to Albany, where students would see the Capitol, visit the New York State Museum and see a Broadway show at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady. The board also hopes to raise enough money to support summer reading programs that would supply free books for students; to sponsor an annual career shadowing day; help orchestrate college visits for graduating seniors; and eventually, Treasurer Lynn Magnus said they’d like to fund internships and mentorships for students in the community.

Magnus said they hope donors will help them to fund the fifth grade trip to Albany so it becomes a staple experience at the school, like the eighth grade trip to Washington, D.C. The Albany trip is already on the docket for this school year, and the Ed Op Fund is helping to support it.

The fund has received donations from different sources over the years to make these types of opportunities possible for students, she said, but for many of the schools’ educational expenses, teachers have “scrambled” to write grants to source their own funding. Magnus hopes that the Ed Op Fund can provide a stable source of funding for those initiatives so teachers can focus on planning school trips, knowing that they will happen.

In the past six years, the fund’s board of trustees, now led by president and former LPCSD Superintendent Roger Catania, has raised $60,000 to provide grants for Lake Placid teachers and students. Now, the group has identified over $45,000 in initiatives, many of which would recur annually, that they want to fund for the district this coming school year. The Ed Op Fund board is challenging community members and Lake Placid alumni to help them meet that goal.

The board is proposing a dollar-for-dollar matching campaign for the first $25,000 in donations to this year’s fund. If the Ed Op Fund receives $25,000 in community and alumni donations, the board will match that amount to establish a fund of $50,000 for the 2021-2022 school year.

Right now, the board is accepting grant applications from teachers for the 2021-2022 school year until Monday, Nov. 15. Magnus said that they’ll start accepting student applications for grants later this year.

The group will send out an annual appeal letter over the next two weeks to raise awareness about the capital campaign. People can donate to the Ed Op Fund online at www.edopfund.org or by sending a check to Educational Opportunity Fund, P.O. Box 364, Lake Placid, NY 12946. Checks can be made payable to the Adirondack Foundation with “to benefit Educational Opportunity Fund” written on the memo line.

The Ed Op Fund provides money to teachers and students who submit grant applications for educational materials, trips, and other opportunities that fall under the fund’s mission. In the past, the fund has helped to support the annual eighth grade trip to Albany, provide ukuleles for students during the pandemic to keep them from using recorders, and give a science class access to an online science software when coronavirus restrictions kept them out of the lab.

The fund was created six years ago, but Magnus said she’s hoping to create more awareness in the broader community about what the Ed Op Fund does.

“Most people didn’t know we existed,” Magnus said.

She said that 43% of Lake Placid students participate in economic assistance programs, and this fund was created by a few locals who wanted to help those Lake Placid students, and the schools, overcome “economic hurdles.”

“It really came to be with a group of concerned citizens with big hearts,” she said.