The Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs Grant Application for minority scholarship funding

The Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs, located in upstate New York, is an independent, co-educational school founded in 1981. We serve students Preschool through Twelfth Grade and have a total enrollment of approximately 250 students. The Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs is not-for-profit with admission open to all qualified students regardless of race, creed, sex or color. We strive to enrich every student’s capacity for imagination and inspire a life-long love for learning and reverence for life. Our goal is to educate so that our graduates are confident and eager to enter a life of individual initiative and social responsibility. Waldorf education has as its foundation the work of Rudolph Steiner who held deeply to the belief that education should be accessible to all.
In an effort to increase accessibility and build cultural diversity at the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs, we established The Steiner Scholarship in early 2011 to provide the opportunity for minority students to attend the Waldorf School. This scholarship is awarded to the recipient for three consecutive years, as long as the student remains in good standing and allows the recipient to complete the 6th, 7th and 8th grade at the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs. It is our belief that providing a scholarship during this critical time in a student’s education can be life changing. Students at the Waldorf School receive an education that is rich in academic learning and artistic development while always striving to keep students engaged in their learning.
We awarded our first ever Steiner scholarship to a minority student for the current 2011-2012 school year. She will receive scholarship assistance through the eighth grade and is a wonderful student, gifted in many areas, and is an asset to our school. Her family is very grateful for this opportunity and has spread awareness of this scholarship to many of their friends within the Saratoga community. As a result, we have received numerous inquiries about whether offering more scholarships may be possible. Many of these families live in low income housing and exist at the poverty level and would be unable to afford any type of private education for their children. Our goal is to add a new scholarship recipient each year, thus sustaining and expanding this scholarship initiative. However, our ability to offer more scholarships is entirely dependent upon our ability to raise the necessary funds.
The Waldorf School is self-supporting through our own tuition revenue and fundraising and as a result, we operate under a very tight budget. Currently, our tuition is $11,150 for students in grades 1-8. Unfortunately, without additional funding, it is not likely that we will be able to expand our minority scholarship for the 2012-2013 school year. This would be a disappointing and sad event as the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs remains committed to building diversity in our school and teaching respect for diversity in the world. If we received this grant funding, we would actively promote awareness of our scholarship to all local elementary schools and throughout the Saratoga area to encourage minority students to apply. We would then be able to award a second Steiner Scholarship to a student for the 2012-2013 academic year.
We are asking for a $50,000 grant from the Dudley T. Dougherty Foundation to expand our minority scholarship program. If we were fortunate enough to receive a grant of this magnitude, we could fund the additional two school years for our current recipient while adding a new student for the 2012-2013 school year. We, of course, would be most grateful for any grant award we might receive and all funds would go directly to supporting scholarship development at the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs.

Respectfully submitted with gratitude for your consideration,

Anne Maguire
Enrollment Director
The Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs