WCCC board member Sharon Jewell, president of the Wayne Local Board of Education, was first introduced to the educational foundation concept at the OSSA Capital Conference about five years ago. She pondered the idea and attempted to find a way to implement a foundation in Warren County and discovered that Hilliard, Ohio schools have a foundation in place.
“We ought to be doing this,” she thought. As she checked into the regulations on establishing foundations, she found out that it takes seed money to begin a foundation and some legal work to fill out and file the papers. While this could be a hard task for an individual school district, WCCC has many business partners to help find seed money. She presented the idea to the WCCC board and it was supportive.
The idea has grown from concept to reality, as the board filed final papers in January, 2000.