Spring here in the Pacific Northwest has been anything but usual.  What with over 14 days of sunny, warm weather in mid May, to the back-to-back thunderstorms over Memorial Day and having reached our average amount of rainfall for June last week, it has indeed been strange.  To cap it all off, our Run For The Arts program exceeded our expectations and set a new record.  Below is the press release going out, and we couldn’t be prouder of the students involved, and the community at large…

Students from around Oregon and Washington, in conjunction with Young Audiences, have  completed the most successful year ever of The Run For The Arts program by raising $800,000.00 for arts education! Over 20,000 students from 81 different schools were involved in the Run For The Arts, helping to raise the money necessary to keep arts programming in their curriculum.

With school districts forced to make damaging cuts to arts programs, Run For The Arts, a  biannual jogathon held at individual schools, raises essential funds to bring the arts into schools.

The money raised will benefit students with residencies and performances by nearly 200 professional teaching artists; it will benefit teachers with teacher professional development, and will benefit schools with much needed art supplies. This year’s amount represents an almost 8% increase over last year, making the total raised-to-date over $13.5 million since the inception of the Run For The Arts program in 1977.

This year, a total of 81 schools in 14 districts across 6 counties and 2 states were involved. While all participating schools are worthy of praise and recognition, Beverly Cleary, Glencoe, Southwest Charter School and Woodstock elementary schools all had substantial increases in the money they raised from the previous year. Also noteworthy are some newcomers to the program; Franciscan Montessori Earth School in Portland, Mini Mozarts’ Preschool in Vancouver and Reedville Elementary in Aloha.

The Run For The Arts was sponsored by local business leader Oregon Screen Impressions, and participating students were awarded prizes from Northwest Children’s Theater, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Oregon Children’s Theatre, Portland Center Stage and Portland Youth Philharmonic.