The Mountain Education Foundation is re-thinking how it gets and gives money for Signal Mountain schools, led by new Executive Director Ashley Hurst.
“How are we thinking bigger?” Hurst asked in a phone interview.
Almost 90% of Signal elementary students go on to Signal Mountain Middle/High School today, making 2,800 students in the mountain system. In the 1990s, when Mountain Education Fund began, 80% of Signal’s elementary kids left for private school, she said.
MEF is celebrating how far it has come, from its founding in 1991 to SMMHS opening in 2008, and asking what it can do in the next three to five years, she said.
Hurst, who joined MEF in February, said Signal Mountain schools have achieved a proof of concept: a hybrid public-private experience ready for a new liftoff, she said.