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SVI Radio Interview: Tim Hale, LCSD2 Education Foundation

Tim Hale, Chairman of the Board for the LCSD2 Education Foundation, stepped into the SVI Radio studio on Wednesday, July 9 with his quarterly update from the foundation. Hale recapped the 2025-26 scholarship drive, the Star Valley Gateway program and giving opportunities to the foundation.

A full transcript of this interview is available below.

(0:00) Joining me live in studio this morning or representing the LCSD II Education Foundation (0:05) is Tim Hale, chairman of the board for the foundation. Tim, good morning, how are you today? (0:08) Good, how are you doing today? (0:09) Doing well, appreciate you coming in and always a lot going on with the foundation, (0:14) but I think first off out of the gate, we should recap how the scholarship drive went (0:19) for this year’s graduating seniors. (0:20) Yeah, we would love to, and we’re so excited to be able to run this program every year.
It’s (0:25) been going for, certainly since I’ve been involved as chairman, which is eight plus (0:30) years now or six or seven, but it’s been going for multiple decades at this point. (0:37) And year after year, it’s so successful and so exciting to see the community rally, (0:42) individuals, business donors, even people from outside the community that maybe have (0:48) connections to Star Valley still are stepping up and donating to support our seniors as (0:54) they graduate. So we had another just thrilling year.
We had a total of 58 donors give 205 (1:02) scholarships to 92 students. So it’s really impressive coverage. And keep in mind, that’s (1:08) for the whole school district, right? So that includes Swift Creek High, Cokeville, and (1:12) Star Valley High.
And so 82 scholarship recipients were from Star Valley High, seven from (1:19) Cokeville, and three from Swift Creek. And then the total amount of money donated was (1:26) just over $145,000 this year. (1:29) $145,000.
Oh my goodness. (1:31) Yeah, it’s crazy. (1:32) It really is.
And that is not our highest year. I mean, we’ve been flirting with the (1:37) $200,000 level in recent years. So it’s an incredible effort.
And all thanks to, again, (1:46) to our donors, to Kim Dockstader, our executive director at the foundation, for just getting (1:52) out there and meeting people in the community and saying, hey, we would love your support. (1:58) And through these scholarships, and the community has really stepped up. (2:02) Absolutely.
So this is an ongoing thing, right? So I’m sure you’re already getting (2:06) ready for the class of 26. (2:08) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We’re always eager to get acquainted with other people who may (2:14) be interested in donating.
And we can tailor these scholarships to some extent. For example, (2:20) someone may come and say, hey, I would like to give a scholarship, but I really want it (2:26) specific to someone who’s pursuing education in STEM, right? Like science, tech, math, (2:32) and so on, engineering. Or I want to focus some kind of scholarship onto trades or the (2:38) arts.
We can do that. Within reason, this takes time and time is money. And by the way, (2:47) we don’t charge at this point, we don’t charge any fee for scholarships that we bring (2:52) in and administer.
But we can tailor things to cater to what your interests may be as (2:57) an individual, as a business. Maybe you want your scholarship as a donating business to (3:03) align with, you know, you’re an accounting firm or something or a construction company. (3:09) We can tailor it so that those types of students are, it’s piquing their interest and it’s (3:15) those ones that it’s getting after.
(3:17) Tim Hill, Chairman of the Board for the LCSU2 Education Foundation, (3:21) was announced what, maybe a year, was it two years ago, the Starbody Gateway Program. (3:25) Yeah. (3:26) And it sounds like you’re starting to see some results from that, right? (3:29) We have.
And that’s another thing where we’ve just seen incredible support from the community. (3:37) You know, it’s so interesting how sometimes you just, you get your arms around something or (3:43) a lot of times this comes from board members, right, who are in the community themselves (3:49) and they see a need and we find that it aligns with our needs as a foundation and the needs (3:56) of the school district. And the Star Valley Gateway is a great example of that, where (4:01) the obstacle, one of the obstacles that the school district has is this concern about, (4:07) you know, being able to have enough teachers who are teaching at a master’s degree level, (4:13) as far as their education goes, so they can provide those, teaching some of those (4:18) concurrent classes, like college level classes.
We want to keep doing that as a district here, (4:25) but you need teachers who have master’s degrees in the subjects that we need those classes taught, (4:31) right? Like I could have a master’s in underwater basket weaving, (4:34) but it wouldn’t do much good in the district. (4:36) No, probably not. (4:37) So we have support from the district.
We had support from the foundation in that we said, (4:45) hey, this is a challenge that the district sees. Our goal as a foundation is to align with the (4:51) and find ways that we can help above and beyond what the district’s able to do for a variety of (4:56) reasons. And so we identified a donor who was willing to say, hey, I want to help fund the (5:02) master’s degree education for a teacher in this specific, who’s pursuing this specific field.
(5:09) And in this case, it’s statistics. And so this LCSD2’s teacher grabbed on, Krista Hershey is, (5:16) who’s been participating as kind of our pilot, and we could not have imagined a better (5:21) pilot to test this out. She’s been phenomenal.
She’s done exceptionally well. And now she’s at (5:27) a point where she’s teaching these classes for additional college level credit. So it’s just (5:33) been wonderful with the school district and the foundation seeing a need with a wonderful (5:38) participant like Krista.
And then key, of course, is that donor, the group of donors who said, (5:45) oh, okay, here’s something I can really put my money in on that is going to provide a (5:49) tremendous value. I mean, think about that. Not only does it provide a significant reduction in (5:55) the cost of her education, but now she’s equipped to be able to teach all these students college (6:01) level courses that they can then take on that saves them costs, right? It just really has this (6:06) great kind of butterfly effect, if you will.
Absolutely. Fantastic program. Happy to hear you (6:10) have a great success story so early on in it.
And I’m sure there’s many, many more to come with that (6:16) one. Tim Hale, again, with the LCSD2 Education Foundation this morning, you mentioned that (6:20) a lot of these ideas come from the community themselves, that board members are from the (6:24) community. And that just highlights the options for the community to be involved (6:27) financially or otherwise in the foundation.
Yeah. And we’re always open to ideas that people have. (6:35) You know, folks will come to us and say, like I’ve kind of hinted at, this is an area that I’m (6:41) interested in supporting.
And, you know, we can’t just as a foundation to say, you know, (6:46) kind of willy nilly, like whatever it is. Again, our goal as a foundation is to align, (6:54) identify what are the key needs of the school district as a whole? And what is the school (7:00) district most good at? And what are some ways that we can support them in some of those efforts and (7:07) initiatives that they may lack resources? And one of the big resources we have as a foundation is (7:13) we can connect to donors and other supporters in the community that maybe the school district (7:18) doesn’t have the time and the energy to do that sort of thing, right? I mean, obviously, (7:21) they’re focused on teaching, helping all these kids get through the system and all that, all the (7:25) work that comes with that. So our opportunity as a foundation is to connect, in a sense, (7:31) the school district to those donors so that the school district can help identify the challenges (7:36) that they have.
And these donors can sweep in and help support that. So we have folks reach out (7:41) that are, you know, hey, I want to support this and this type of educational path in the trades or, (7:49) like I said, with STEM or the arts, and we can help make that possible. And we’re doing some (7:52) things at the foundation right now to really streamline that process.
So for anybody (7:55) listening that’s thought, you know, hey, maybe I could make, for example, supporting the foundation (8:01) and future education in the Star Valley community by giving financially, (8:09) reach out to us. Reach out to Kim Dockstader. You can reach out to me personally.
(8:14) And let’s talk about it. Because there are ways to set up gifts through your own estate planning. (8:21) You could do, there’s like a required amount of money that has to come out from like IRA accounts (8:26) every year.
It’s called a required minimum distribution. That can be given to a charity (8:29) like ours. And it’s tax free.
You don’t pay any taxes on that money. So there’s all sorts of (8:35) interesting ways that we can help design this with you. And then it can go on to help these (8:40) incredible students.
Absolutely love it. So again, reach out to the LCSD2 Education Foundation. (8:45) With any questions or details, Tim, as always, appreciate the updates.
Thank you very much. (8:49) It’s all part of the weekday wake up this morning on the SBI radio network.

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