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Partners & Sponsors - I Partners & Sponsors - II

Partners & Sponsors - I

The Colorado Department of Education (CDE) has supported Lotus through a 3-year start-up grant program totaling nearly $700,000. We are utilizing the grant funds to implement our charter project with the goal of making Lotus one of the top schools in the State of Colorado We sincerely thank CDE for their generous contribution to the success of Lotus.

CDE has also provided initial board training for our school board, enabling the board to manage the school better and make informed decisions. The training was again part of the grant program and was provided free of charge to Lotus. We also thank CDE for this professional training contribution.

Lotus is a public charter school within the Aurora Public School (APS) District. We would like to thank our authorizer for granting Lotus its 3-year charter, and look forward to the renewal in July 2009. APS supports our financial and special education operations and is helping Lotus to succeed as the only Math, Science, and Technology charter in the school district.

Through a generous start-up grant totaling $240,000 from the Walton Family Foundation Lotus is off to a good start in establishing itself as one of Colorado’s finest charter schools. We are using the grant funds to cover our start-up activities from financial to legal consultants and from furniture to technology equipment. We sincerely thank The Walton Family Foundation for this generous contribution.

The Colorado League of Charter Schools (CLCS) has been willing and available to assist Lotus anytime we have needed help in just about any matter. Through his vast charter experience, Mr. Jim Griffin has provided guidance and help to Lotus from the beginning. His help was crucial in getting charter approval from the APS district. He also provided expert training for our school board to improve its capabilities.

As the best university in the state, we partner with University of Colorado at Boulder for a handful of activities. We work together with numerous outreach programs to bring the best of CU-Boulder to Lotus.

A recent example is the visit from the LASP (Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics). During their visit, the outreach coordinators established a STARLAB inside our gym for our students to experience outer space better then ever. Read here to learn more about the experience Lotus students gained from this outreach visit. The CU Grants Office sponsored this visit, and we thank them for their contribution.

Another exciting field trip will take place in April. Lotus has been working with two other outreach programs to organize a terrific field trip to the University of Colorado, Boulder Campus. The transportation is provided through a travel grant from SORCE (Student Outreach Retention Center for Equity); we would like to thank them for this generous contribution.

Our first host is the Colorado Space Grant Outreach (CoSGC). CoSGC was established by NASA in 1989 as part of a national effort to maintain America's preeminence in aerospace science and technology. The Colorado Space Grant Consortium extends space education to K-12 schools through its 14 member colleges and universities throughout Colorado. Headquartered at CU-Boulder, the consortium offers teacher workshops and provides group tours and hands-on activities in the Discovery Learning Center at CU-Boulder. Visit their website for more info at (http://spacegrant.colorado.edu/outreach/).

Our students will visit the Discovery Learning Center and will be given a tour of the facility where an elite group of engineering students are building satellites and participating in other space-related research. After a short lecture on an exciting Lego dropping experiment, they will build their own mini-satellites. The last part will be the most enjoyable: they will drop their Legos from the special Lego-dropping portion of the building to apply the concepts they will just have learned in the lecture.

Our second host is SORCE. Visit http://www.colorado.edu/SORCE/home.html to learn more about SORCE and the activities they offer. After the Lego experiment, Lotus students will have another lecture from a university student working for SORCE on topics like what to do in order to get admitted to a university and university life basics and expectations. This lecture will serve as a very good introduction both to motivate our students to work harder for college and to inform them on what to expect once they will have begun college. After the lecture, they will be given a tour of the beautiful Boulder campus with visits to different departmental and administration buildings.