WE CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN
Our Impact.
The impact of VEP goes beyond the grants we award. Each year, VUSD staff and student VEPGrant recipients share how these awards have helped bring new ideas, opportunities, and experiences to life. Many recipients share their stories at our annual Celebration & Gratitude event each spring, while others send their reflections directly to our VEP Co-Presidents. Their words offer a firsthand look at the difference these grants make in classrooms and in the lives of students.
VEP's impact also extends beyond the VEPGrant program. This past year, we proudly supported early literacy events at four VUSD Title I elementary schools. While each school created its own unique event, they shared a common goal: encouraging a love of reading and ensuring that every child in TK through 2nd grade received free books, courtesy of VEP.
The stories, reflections, and messages of gratitude featured on this page offer a glimpse into the difference VEP makes across our schools and community.
Grants funded in 2025/26
What your donations
look like in a classroom.
As you read the comments, you can see why giving staff and students the opportunity to develop a creative project is worth the time and effort that VEP puts into this process each year — and why we are so grateful to the many donors in our community who make this work possible.
Hello VEP members!
On behalf of Lincoln, we would like to express our sincere gratitude for reading in our classrooms this morning and for the generous gift of free books. The students are so excited to take a book home today — you have put smiles on many young faces!
We truly appreciate your support and look forward to more opportunities to partner with VEP in the future.
With the tools purchased with this grant, our students successfully shaped traditional surfboards in the
woodshop shaping bay! Big smiles all around!
We are truly grateful to VEP and the Early Literacy Committee for your generosity and continued support of our students and families.
The book giveaway at our EPF Día de los Muertos event was very well received. Families were excited to select books, and the overall response from our community was extremely positive. The remaining books that were left with us were thoughtfully distributed to students across grade levels, with a particular focus on ensuring that children who may have limited access to books at home were able to take some home. Several teachers also incorporated the books into their classroom libraries to further support early literacy efforts. We also shared a few books at our ELAC meeting.
I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you and VEP for supporting literacy at Sheridan Way. We feel very
fortunate that you were able to bring books for our TK-2nd grade. Our families had such gratitude, as I heard
from a couple of parents what a great gift this was for their families. Thank you again!
Students work together to create, discuss and solve problems through play. Students now have a variety of choices to explore and learn with.
This hands-on experience increased engagement, improved comprehension, and allowed students to make stronger connections between the content and their own bodies and daily lives.
The Incredible Human Machine helped bring science to life in a way that was memorable, engaging,
and impactful for students.
I was able to present 4 lessons to both Kinder classrooms on the topic of visual and hearing
impairments.
Thanks to the funding of materials to create a wellness center, my classroom has become a place where students gather and build community, including playing games together, crafting; creating art, exploration with Legos and imaginative play with the dollhouse. Kids of all ages from 4-14 are able to enjoy the room. It's a safe and calm place for students to drop in during recess or breaks.
The project was a great success in our classroom. Students were able to use the camera to create
slideshows and multimedia projects that connected to classroom learning. We also used the camera
to document school events and capture student achievements throughout the year.
One of the highlights was students creating commercials for a school project, which helped build their
creativity, collaboration, and presentation skills. In addition, students learned basic photography and
camera skills, giving them hands-on experience with technology in a meaningful and engaging way.
Our choir completed and debuted Not-So-Silent-Night Volume Nine.
We recorded, mixed, and mastered 12 songs on this year’s album.
We inspired students to write their own songs which provided another creative outlet in this project.
Thanks to the VEP student grant, 30 choir students have utilized our school’s recording studio to release Volume 9 of our annual Not-So-Silent Night winter-themed album, filled with solos, duets, and small ensemble pieces in addition to choir songs. Students have worked hard to learn, rehearse, record, revise, and publish their voices so that their artistry can be heard anywhere in the world with an internet connection - just search “the Buena High School Choir!”
We received our 3D printers as kits so that students could team up and work to build the printers based on the instructions provided by the manufacturer. This provided a fantastic opportunity for the students to have a self-directed, hands-on project with lasting impact for our school site. The buy in was quite significant., as students immediately jumped at this opportunity. The printers are nearly completed with test prints in process.
This grant was a big win for our students and our library! Book discussions were lively and students were genuinely excited to turn their reading into something they could design, create, and keep.
Through symbolic stickers to character-inspired keychains and bracelets, students showed deep thinking while having a lot of fun. The hands-on creative pieces helped stories made reading feel fresh and meaningful. Watching students move through the cycle of Read. Reflect. Create. Repeat. showed that mixing creativity with reading helps middle school readers succeed.
Our "Little Scientist" project was a huge success! The new science center items truly brought learning to life and sparked curiosity. Through hands-on exploration, students actively discovered and explored key science and STEM standards while having an amazing time playing, learning, and interacting with
others. It sparked a joy for learning this year and many years following.
My 2nd grade students have successfully completed two projects using the cardboard saws that were
purchased with the VEP grant! They constructed 3-D robots and created cardboard birds that they then
painted and decorated.
My students love using the saws, and I also observed a lot of collaboration and
cooperation when using the tools.