Welcome to the Hood River County Education Foundation

"The equipment we purchased with the HREF Impact Teaching Grant for our sensory room at Westside has been extremely beneficial for our students. Students have many opportunities for communication, interaction, and sensory regulation. Students have opportunities to practice and develop motor skills and coordination, turn-taking, joint attention, and engaging with peers. Students are using the space to take a break and return to class, regulated and ready to learn. Students engage with each other and have benefited from peer modeling and interactions with students who are of different ages and have different abilities."

"The musical each year unites students of all ages and from different back grounds and skill sets to create a group project of a full musical. Students design and create sets. They also have a chance to be leaders in the process of student directing. Students can choose to be on the acting or technology crew and the process lasts most of the school year. This year we [added] tap dance and choreography to the production process. We hosted three elementary schools and students were excited to watch and extremely engaged as they asked questions at the end of each show. We also performed four other shows for the community in both evening and afternoon matinees. The feedback was also extremely positive and each night students received standing ovations. … The tap shoes and skills will continue to be used in our after school program and in upcoming musicals at Wyeast Middle School and our high school."

"Mid Valley students will be able to participate in the hands-on process of growing food from a seed to preparing it to eat. Throughout this process, students will be able to develop critical thinking and collaborative problem-solving skills and will be able to reflect on the importance of environmental stewardship and sustainability. … The hydroponic tower project, even in its early implementation stages, has been the talk of the town. The first day that it was built and set up in the corner of the cafeteria, students pointed and tried to guess what it was (a spaceship? a robot? a plastic tree?). When I first turned on the LED lights as a demo, the whole cafeteria filled with oohs and ahhs. I look forward to seeing what students decide to grow and what they are willing to taste test!"