GATE to Fund Various Clubs

At the Site Council meeting on April 7, Principal Wynne Satterwhite proposed to use state designated Gifted and Talented Education money to provide supplementary funds for the Literary Magazine, Mock Trial, Model UN and Speech and debate.

Mock Trial and Model UN will receive $500 each, the Literary Magazine will receive $1000 and Speech and Debate will receive $5000 from GATE funds.

“[The GATE program] is a categorical program that provides money to the school to enhance GATE students’ education,” Satterwhite said.

Currently, the school has no GATE coordinator as previous GATE coordinator Debra Whitmore resigned before the start of the school year. Part of the GATE funds were traditionally used to pay for the coordinator, who was in charge of allocating the money to different clubs.

Although there is no coordinator this year, Satterwhite’s proposal will ensure that clubs that previously received GATE money will be funded again this year. However, this is the first year that they Literary Magazine has applied for and receive GATE money. The school is currently looking into filling the GATE coordinator position for next year.

The clubs that qualify to receive GATE funds must have a high enough number of GATE students who passed a qualifying exam in elementary school.

Other than having enough GATE members to receive the money, the clubs selected to receive more financial support are also clubs that are in need of more funds.

“For the past two or three years, we have given some money to co-curricular clubs that need money mostly to cover travel costs so that they can focus their energies on preparing for their competitions and not on fundraising,” Satterwhite said.

While the GATE funds will help eliminate fundraising time, they will also be beneficial simply because fundraising is significantly limited this year.

“With new district policies [for] fundraising with food and things like that, it’s a lot harder for clubs to get money,” said ASB member junior Jackie Radford, who serves on the Site Council.

Mock Trial, Model UN and Speech and Debate need money to pay for transportation fees, and the Literary Magazine needs to cover publication costs of the “Oris” magazine.