About Us

The Mountain View Educational Foundation (MVEF) is a volunteer driven non-profit, a public benefit organization established in 1983. MVEF provides funding for enrichment programs and educational materials to enhance the solid academic curriculum and maintain the high quality of education in the Mountain View Whisman School District in California.

Why is MVEF Important?

The MVEF philosophy starts with helping every child in the Mountain View elementary and middle schools. By encouraging community involvement, MVEF engages individuals, businesses and corporations to support programs that touch every child. MVEF invests in programs which directly relate to the quality and breadth of the educational experience. This has become a necessity in Mountain View due to:

•  Reduced funding from the State
•  The highest cost of living in the county
•  High cost demographic factors

California ranks near the bottom of all states in the per-student spending on education, as measured by either the National Education Association (NEA) or the Nation Center for Education Statistics (NCES). While there are many states in a similar position, no other state has the challenge of bringing quality education to such a large, diverse population.

This reduced funding is compounded in communities like Mountain View. Because of the high cost of living and the associated difficulty in attracting teachers to Silicon Valley, a disproportionate amount of the annual educational budget goes for teacher salaries. This continues to put pressure on the school district budget. In addition to the school district's parcel tax, MVEF is the most reliable additional source for supplemental funding to achieve greater education.

A well-rounded education--an education for the world ahead--goes beyond the basics. Study after study has shown that a well-rounded education includes music, art, physical fitness and other enrichment. The Mountain View Educational Foundation exists to ensure that these critical priorities don't fall to the bottom of the list when budget crises hit California's public education system. Without MVEF, many of these programs would have to be severely cut or eliminated. MVEF makes funding decisions based on parent surveys, school district funding needs, and our commitment to All Kids, All Schools. Our programs touch every child in the school district. We encourage families to contribute to both their school's PTA and to MVEF. The school PTA pays for school-specific needs and events while MVEF pays for educational enrichment that is integrated directly with the curriculum and educational priorities district-wide. When parents invest in MVEF, they are not only ensuring that their children will receive this important enrichment during their school day, but also making it possible for every child to receive these programs in school.

MVEF has a long history of meeting important needs in our school district and filling gaps in state funding. MVEF's very successful "Tools for Schools" program in the early 2000's raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for improving our school and classroom libraries. MVEF funds brought full-fledged PE back to our schools in the 2000-2001 school year. Grants secured by MVEF for the hands-on Science program have allowed both the elementary and middle school students to gain valuable exposure to science and technology, central to success in Silicon Valley. Our program funding has evolved in the past few years. In addition to fully funding a number of our own programs, we have partnered with the school district parcel tax to ensure sufficient funding for music, art, science materials, after school sports and extracurricular performing arts.