Wallace Foundation Continues Providing Assistance to Fundamental Learning Center
Co-founded in 2001 by two mothers with a desire to help their dyslexic children, the Fundamental Learning Center (FLC) trains educators and parents in methods of teaching children with dyslexia and other reading difficulties. Since founding the FLC, they have helped hundreds of thousands of children improve their reading skills, grown their services to include training for parents and educators outside the Wichita area, and opened the Rolph Literacy Academy, a full-time school serving children with dyslexia.
In 2016, the Dwane and Velma Wallace Foundation awarded the FLC a grant that helped to provide training, materials, and supplies for the Rolph Literacy Academy.
According to FLC executive director Jeanine Phillips, since receiving the Wallace Foundation grant, the Rolph Learning Academy now offers state-of-the-art school programs designed to cater to the learning styles of children with dyslexia. These programs include supplemental classes such as PE, dance and movement, drama, music, and technology, all of which allow students at Rolph Literacy Academy to receive a well-rounded education.
Besides helping to improve programs at the FLC, a portion of the first Wallace Foundation grant went into a stability fund established to provide student scholarships.
“We are proud to provide educational opportunities to the children we serve,” Phillips said. “In our commitment to helping as many children as we can, the Rolph Literacy Academy has awarded 66 multi-year scholarships to children wishing to attend.”
In 2019, The Wallace Foundation provided an additional grant to Transforming Education, FLC’s capital campaign to fund the construction of a new facility. With a design inspired by the Frank Lloyd Wright teaching school originally designed for Wichita State University, this new building will house classrooms for up to 120 children who struggle to read. This facility will also include a cutting-edge teacher education center that focuses on teaching teachers to use the “science of reading” and “structured literacy,” methodologies seldom used in Wichita schools but scientifically proven to work for the majority of children who struggle to learn to read, write, and spell.
The nearly $3 million contribution has continued to support the FLC’s two-part campaign, which has been pledged out until 2027 and will help fund the FLC’s recent 38,000-square-foot building project that started in 2019. Due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, building plans were eventually halted, causing the organization to require an additional $5 million in funding. Currently, the building is under construction and on track to be completed in August of 2023, thanks to generous contributions from organizations like the Wallace Foundation.
“Our organization was founded in 2000; we opened doors in a small strip mall because dyslexia was not recognized in our schools as a specific reading disability, so we’ve had a lot of work to do,” said Marena Assarsson, Director of Marketing for the Phillips Fundamental Learning Center. “We are the only accredited teacher training site in the state, and we have a big job, as dyslexia affects one in five kids, with about 130,000 kids going unrecognized each year. This building is state of the art, designed specifically to take care of the children, teachers, and families we serve.”
Although dyslexia is one of the most common educational disabilities in the country, Kansas schools lack the resources needed to address it. Additionally, because insurance companies do not consider dyslexia a medical issue, parents must pay for their child’s dyslexia testing and treatment out of pocket. That makes the services offered by the FLC critical to Kansas children and teachers. Find out more about the FLC by visiting www.FunLearn.org.
“We are all so thankful for the kind of support that the Wallace Foundation provides both us and other nonprofits in the community and across the state. Receiving these grants has helped us make a profound difference in the lives of dyslexic children in the Wichita area in addition to giving us confidence in our community and what we are doing,” said Assarsson.
More About the Wallace Foundation
Founded by Dwane and Velma Wallace in 1989, the Wallace Foundation’s mission is to support a wide variety of tax-exempt, charitable organizations primarily in the Wichita, Kansas, area, and secondarily in the state of Kansas, in the categories of arts and culture, education, community development and enhancement, social services and needs, and quality of life.
To find out more about grant application requirements and the overall process, visit the Our Approval Process page.