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Photo by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Mountain Brook Junior High in front of one of the new video boards donated to the school system through the foundation.
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Photo courtesy of Mountain Brook City Schools Foundation.
The Mountain Brook City Schools Foundation provided Institute for Multi-Sensory Education Orton Gillingham Reading Training for elementary teachers.
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Photo courtesy of Mountain Brook City Schools Foundation.
The Foundation recently funded Prisms software and related tools for Mountain Brook Junior High and Mountain Brook High School. This technology provides virtual reality content modules for students in core concepts like math and science.
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Photo courtesy of Mountain Brook City Schools Foundation.
Through the Foundation’s annual grant, every student and teacher in the district receives a Chromebook.
Established in 1992, the Mountain Brook City Schools Foundation was created after a concern over lack of state funding for public education.
The foundation’s creators believed the critical “extras” of technology, professional development and library enhancements would be the first cut during economic downturns, so an endowment fund was created to ensure the long-term protection of the school system.
Those goals are still the focus of the foundation 32 years later, and since its creation, a total of $10.4 million in annual grants have been awarded to all six of the Mountain Brook schools through the foundation’s work. The endowment fund is currently over $12 million.
Kristin Ritter, president of the board of directors for the foundation, explained that the money given each year goes into the endowment, and the board uses a percentage of a formula to give back to the school system.
Having served on the board since 2016, Ritter’s term as president ends in May 2025, when president-elect Bennett White will take over the position as head of the 36-member board.
“We don’t raise the money in that year,” Ritter said. “Whatever is raised, we put in the endowment and then pull from that what the past five quarters look like. This is a really healthy organization because of the momentum we’ve had.”
Much of that momentum can be credited to the hiring of Executive Director Rachel Weingartner in 2019. The sole employee of the foundation, Weingartner is tasked with making sure the fundraising campaigns are successful and run efficiently.
That is something she has experience doing. Weingartner previously spent time working in the foundation department at the Creative Artist Agency, where she matched artists with organizations they could help.
From there, she moved to a position as the vice president of development for the Country Music Hall of Fame, which focused on individual giving, and also helped assist in a capital campaign to expand the museum.
In 2019, Weingartner was approached about the executive director position at MBCSF. While she wasn’t looking for anything full-time as a mom to two young children, the position seemed like the perfect fit.
“It would be for my children’s school. It was an opportunity I just couldn’t turn down, doing what I love and had experience in,” she said. “My kids are now almost 10 and 8 and 3½, so I’ll be in the school system for a long time.”
Weingartner said that initially, the fundraising was driven by a major gifts campaign, but now there are several campaigns in progress and the foundation is raising more money than it’s giving away.
The annual grant for the 2024-25 school year, totaling $587,696, will fund resources including a math coach for each elementary school, the Mountain Brook Schools summer learning conference, Phonics First training for teachers, an updated website for the school system, the Institute for Innovation, stipends for teachers participating in summer professional development, projectors with advanced safety features for classrooms, Chromebooks for every student and teacher in the district and more.
“Last fiscal year [2023], we raised $777,301, and based on our set spending calculation, we gave out $549,440. We’re in a really good situation,” Ritter said.
To compare the growth over a year’s time, a total of $816,123.90 was raised for the most recent school year. Continued fundraising will allow the foundation to have a stable amount of money coming to the school system every year, even in dry or down times, Weingartner said. Over the last eight years, the annual fundraising has increased from $304,563 to $816,123.
“[Superintendent] Dr. [Dicky] Barlow comes to us with big-picture ideas about what impacts the entire school system the most,” Ritter said. “Where we differ from PTO, we are thinking of things to touch all six schools. If we had an additional $250,000 [and] we were the school system each year, there is plenty he could fund with those dollars.”
Another thing the foundation does is provide stipends for teachers who come in during the summer to do learning groups or to attend the annual learning conference hosted at Mountain Brook High School.
“Our teachers are some of the best advocates for the foundation because they really understand,” Ritter said. “When I talk to new teachers, they are blown away that there’s a group like the foundation that’s here to support them.”
The foundation also funds the Institute for Innovation yearly. Created by Barlow and team in 2016, teachers are encouraged to apply with ideas that will transform their classroom but would not normally be funded.
“What we’ve seen is the times that it does work, it just totally transforms our school system. This is the only time teachers get specific funding from us,” Ritter said.
One of these projects was presented by Morgan Chatham, a math teacher at Mountain Brook High School, who wanted to encourage more interaction from students in her classroom. She put whiteboards all around the classroom and a projector, which encouraged more student collaboration and interaction.
“The other math teachers at the high school wanted their room to be structured like that, so Dr. Barlow was able to put school system money towards that because it was a proven concept,” Ritter said. “As a foundation, we want to make our teachers feel empowered and valued and I’m proud that’s something the foundation does.”
Ritter said it’s hard to put into words how much Weingartner does and means to the foundation.
She describes her as gracious, organized and a great communicator.
“We can be in a meeting where I have a lot of ideas and passion and by the end of the meeting Rachel has probably a full week worth of work,” Ritter said. “We [on the board] all communicate differently and she has the ability to understand the way people work. All of the campaigns are different, and she’s creative but very adaptable.”
Weingartner’s impact is also prevalent throughout the community. Ritter said that she is connected to a lot of people and there’s a mutual respect there.
“We as parents are asked for a lot of different funding. It’s hard to know what to give to and to know what the difference is,” Ritter said. “Rachel has had some conversations at the pool or The Pig or at dinner where people are and ask why they should give to the foundation. She really understands things that people don’t understand. It’s an on-the-ground person helping.”
Ritter said she has to remind herself how incredibly unique it is to have $12 million in the foundation’s endowment fund.
“The size of our endowment and what we were able to do with it — until people are educated on what it does for our system and what it would look like if we took it away you just don’t know until that’s explained to you,” she said.
Weingartner said what she loves about her job is that each day looks different.
“One day I could be designing an email to send out to everyone in the school system, the next day I’m doing bookkeeping, the next I’m speaking to PTO presidents,” Weingartner said. “Every day is very different and I wear a lot of different hats and I like that. It suits me.”
For more information on the Mountain Brook Schools Foundation or ways to give, visit mbgives.org.
