Please help support the Garrison & Cardozo community! We have been overwhelmed by the generous response of the Garrison community to our request below. Our friends and neighbors up the hill at Cardozo EC – including many Wildcat alumni and siblings – would also greatly appreciate our support in this difficult time. Please continue to give and spread the word, and any additional funds we raise will be shared with Cardozo to support the great work Principal Mola and his team are doing. Thank you for helping to build a strong and loving Shaw/Logan Circle/U Street community for ALL of our families!I am Brigham Kiplinger, proud principal of Garrison Elementary School, and parent of two Garrison Wildcats. Garrison is a diverse neighborhood public school serving the Logan Circle, U Street, and Shaw neighborhoods of Washington, DC. As a Title I school, more than half of our students are from low-income families and nearly 25 percent have special needs.
Our school community strives to live by our five Wildcat Values of Empathy, Teamwork, Perseverance, Excellence, and Joy, and never have these been more evident than over the past five weeks since our abrupt school closure in mid-March. Since then, our teachers have created joyful, rigorous virtual learning experiences each day, our parents have stepped up as at-home teachers, and our community has figuratively wrapped our arms around each other to meet our needs as best we can. I am in grateful awe of how our community has responded to this pandemic crisis.
We have distributed almost 100 laptops and hotspots to ensure each child can connect to their virtual learning at home. And we have distributed almost $5000 in grocery gift cards to ensure our families have enough to eat. But it is not yet enough. Some of our families have lost jobs, and others have lost loved ones to the pandemic. School will now be closed for the remainder of the academic year, and the soonest we’ll have our Wildcats back with us is August.
Our goal is to raise enough to support our Garrison families in need with weekly grocery cards and other financial assistance as requested through the end of the summer. The Garrison PTO will match contributions, up to $5,000, to maximize the impact of your donation.
The need during this crisis is staggering, and I know this isn’t the only request many of you will read today. But I can offer two assurances: first, that every donation will provide direct relief to Garrison families in need. And second, that without this support, many of our school’s families will struggleto put food on the table and meet other basic needs.
DCPS is still providing a meal each day to students, but for some of our families, that simply isn’t enough. For many, picking up school meals simply isn’t feasible, and it doesn’t address the many other ways their lives have been disrupted by this pandemic.
Please, donate what you can if you can to help Garrison families, and share this request with others you know who may be able to support. Thank you for your care, and wishing you and your family well!
Love,
Principal Kip & the Wildcats
Because the Garrison PTO is recognized as a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS tax code, your donation will be tax deductible.
