The fundraising goal for Sparkle 2026 is $285,000.

The funds raised are essential for

• meeting the school's increased operating expenses.  Please remember that in a typical year your support of Sparkle is needed to just bridge the gap between tuition and the actual cost to educate each child and is necessary for meeting our school’s operating budget. As a school, ICSJ has been very mindful of tuition increases over the last few years and has tried to absorb the many rising costs like employee health benefits, technology subscriptions, utilities, more tuition assistance needs due to the end of the Empower Illinois Tax Credit Scholarship Program that supported 20 students, etc. Given the increases we’ve seen across nearly all areas of education operations this year, we increased our fundraising goal for Sparkle. Since last year’s Sparkle netted nearly $270,000, we set this year’s budgeted goal at $285,000.
  
  
• attracting and retaining talented teachers. Our paddle raise, with a goal of $45,000, will specifically support teacher retention.  Your donations allow us to provide retention bonuses, which results in our attracting and retaining the best teachers and staff for our school, directly benefiting all of our students.  With a teacher shortage in our city and nation, it is more important than ever for ICSJ to sustain our faculty of well-qualified, high-performing and accomplished teachers. Our school’s outstanding reputation is a draw for recruiting talented employees, but we rely on your support to help offer competitive compensation.

As always, we take great pride in supporting our pod and in supporting our ICSJ families that need us during a challenging time. We will continue to support tuition assistance and gifts may be made directly to this effort, as requested.