The Excellence in Education Endowment

THE NEED
Space alone cannot effect the change we seek in the lives of our students. If a new gym and classrooms are the laboratory where student transformation takes place, it is still fundamental to have the agents of that transformation present. The Living Curriculum Teacher is the agent of change that God uses at Wheaton Academy to transform young lives into the image of their Savior Jesus Christ. Our Living Curriculum Teachers have become the core of a Wheaton Academy education.

However, our employees have difficulty affording to live in DuPage County on what we are able to pay. Even though our salaries and benefits may be above average for Christian schools, they are still well below what the public schools are able to pay. We need to overcome this obstacle that forces some of our best educators to leave the profession and others to struggle beyond what theyshould.

THE SOLUTION
We believe that a significant employee endowment is one way to address this problem. By strategically using this endowment income along with an enhanced salary schedule we can provide competitive compensation for our wonderful Living Curriculum Educators, both faculty and staff. It is our hope that our employees will not merely survive but they will thrive as they teach our students. This endowment would help enhance compensation, benefits and living standards for these wonderful servants of God.

The endowment’s proceeds will go directly to our employees in two ways. First, the endowment will finance direct cash awards that will be based on a predetermined criteria for all the employees. Second, the endowment will support an “employee-needs” fund. Employees will be able to apply for assistance grants to cover needs including but not limited to the following: help for continuing education, sabbaticals, professional development, first-time home buyers, children’s scholarships, extraordinary medical expenses, etc. Our phase one goal for the endowment is $1.6M. We trust that the Excellence in Education Endowment will spur transformationin and outside the classroom as it promotes growth of our Living Curriculum Educators.