Investing in Innovation

Marco Island Charter Middle School principal Margo Heidenreich is urging the community to step up to help fund and sustain the high-achieving school by filling the gaps not covered by tax dollars. On Wednesday, April 15, Heidenreich hosted community leaders, including city council members Rene Champagne and Deb Henry, philanthropists Myrt Rose and Allyson Richards, fundraising specialist Hilary Fortune from Marco Island Academy, and Tommie Barfield elementary principal Amanda Kubin. The program, called Invest in Innovation, featured performances from the school’s jazz band and classroom tours.

"Ultimately, we're looking for support,” Heidenreich said, "community support to help fund the programs that we're growing. Our main fundraiser really is student enrollment and the population of students has gone down on the island since Covid.

After the jazz band performance, Matt Huneke, dean of discipline and athletics addressed the group. Huneke took advantage of his time to tout the school’s successful athletic programs.

“We have the largest middle school sports program of all the public schools in Collier County,” Heidenreich said. “Between golf, flag football, and tennis, we have several sports in addition to what the traditional public schools have. So we do kind of give them a bigger, broader base to hone their skills and to enjoy what they're passionate about. We have one of the top state golfers that went through our school here. He's currently at MIA. We have his brother here who's almost better than him."

Classroom visits included looks into the school’s science and STEAM programs. STEAM education is an interdisciplinary approach to learning that integrates Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics to foster critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative problem solving.

“Michael Donnelly is our STEAM coordinator,” Heidenreich said. “He works with our staff. Miss Lee is currently doing a lesson with her students with a novel they're reading right now. The last lesson she did, they tracked sound waves of poetry because all poetry has a cadence. They were able to capture that and see the sound waves that they made when they read their poetry."

Heidenreich is looking for community-wide involvement with the school. But she realizes the involvement needs to be a two-way street.

"Honestly, we're always looking for community support,” she said. “One of the things I want to do is reach out and kind of give back to the community. We ask for money a lot. And I know that, but we also want our kids to be out in the community and giving back. One of the things we do now is our students go over to Watermark and read with the residents over there. And that's just one example.”

Heidenreich said many feel the school is completely funded by taxpayer dollars. That’s not the case.

"No, it doesn’t,” Heidenreich said flatly. “It really, truly doesn't even come close to covering it. We have a deficit each year we have to fundraise for. And we've got things that we want to grow towards. And again, we have to fundraise for those things. So we just want to get the word out there. This is what we're doing for the kids on the island and off the island. With our buses, we're able to pull students from the East Naples area to provide that education here as well. That's what today was all about, just kind of inviting people that we know might have a little bit of influence or know others that might be interested in coming in and seeing what we're all about.”