Names Family Foundation Grant

“Providing a Better Environment for Health and Physical Education for University Laboratory High School Students through the Construction of a Gymnasium”

Executive Summary

University Laboratory High School is a selective admission, public, laboratory school that is located in and closely associated with the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Uni (short for University Laboratory High School) was established in 1921 and since then has been serving academically talented students in the state of Illinois. Uni’s mission is “to spark the creative fervor and high aspirations of talented young people; to ignite their intellectual growth; to develop their critical thinking skills; to challenge them through traditional and experimental strategies; to instill in them a sense of citizenship; and to positively influence the larger educational community.”

Uni, despite its yearly enrollment of 300 students, has many accomplished and successful alumni, including three Nobel laureates and a Pulitzer Prize Winner. Uni continues to nurture students to their full potential and provides an environment where students can grow and succeed, as evidenced by the consistent success in various math and science competitions as well as standardized tests. Uni has also been recognized several times as a “public elite” school by Newsweek. Along with its talented students, Uni has excellent faculty and staff. All of Uni’s teachers are very experienced and well qualified in their respective fields. Uni teachers are very dedicated to Uni, with most serving at the school for numerous years and some even serving for decades.

Uni is a publicly funded school, and although it receives support from general state aid, it does not receive support from local property taxes. Uni was originally funded by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s College of Education, but the College of Education stopped financially supporting Uni in the 1980s. Today, Uni is funded mostly by the Illinois State Board of Education, and additional funding comes from the University of Illinois and other private donations.

Problem Statement

This proposal has been written as a request for funding to build a new gymnasium for University Laboratory High School. University Laboratory High School has noticed several factors that point to the need for the construction of a new gymnasium:

1.     1. Uni students currently share the University’s old men’s gymnasium with gymnasts, which often leads to various distractions, hindrances, and inconveniences for students during their PE class.

2.     2. Kenney Gym (the gym currently being used by Uni students) is a block away from Uni, which 1) makes it inconvenient for the PE staff to commute back and forth to run errands and perform their jobs efficiently and 2) causes students to lose PE class time due to allotted time given to arrive at the gym.

3.    3.  Many of the locker rooms in Kenney Gym that Uni students use are extremely unsanitary and harmful to health, evidenced by regular sightings of cockroaches and the lack of janitors to clean and fix necessities.

Currently, nothing is being done about the problems listed above. Students have learned to adapt to the inconvenient circumstances in the past, but as the gym ages, these problems are worsening to the point that they cannot be ignored. Uni has been unable to build a new gym because we do not have sufficient funding for such a huge project. This is why we are requesting a total of 1.2 million dollars of funding for this project. This money will be used to demolish the old gym located next to Uni and to build a new gym on that land. A new gym would solve all of the problems listed above as well as provide a healthy learning environment for Uni students that will help to continue Uni’s tradition of excellence. A new gym would be of great help to students who are being nurtured into adults who can positively influence the larger educational community.