SAISD Foundation

10/01/2026

Surprise 🎉 San Antonio ISD middle schools! 🎮🏆

Over the past week, the SAISD Foundation delivered eSports Club grants to 12 middle schools across the district. Each campus received a grant package worth about $1,500 to launch a year-round Super Smash Bros. Ultimate club. That includes two Nintendo Switches, two copies of Smash Bros., controllers, a set of 10 team jerseys, and access to our mobile eSports Bus.

Congratulations to:
🎮 CAST Imagine Middle School
🎮 Cotton Academy, SAISD
🎮 Crockett Academy, SAISD
🎮 Fenwick Academy, SAISD
🎮 Hawthorne Academy, SAISD
🎮 Hot Wells Middle School, SAISD
🎮 Harris Middle School, SAISD
🎮 Longfellow Middle School
🎮 Twain Dual Language Academy, SAISD
🎮 Poe Middle School, SAISD
🎮 Unity Prep Stewart, SAISD
🎮 SAISD-Young Women's Leadership Academy

We see this as a workforce investment as much as an extracurricular one:
🎮 Over 50% of students in scholastic eSports report increased interest in STEM majors and careers (NASEF).
🎓 More than 280 colleges and universities now offer varsity eSports through the NACE.
💼 The industry runs on careers our students can start training for now: broadcasting, live production, data analytics, network engineering, event management, and game design.

These clubs will train all year before facing off in an SAISD Middle School eSports Competition this spring. SAISD Middle Schoolers, we'll see you at the controller! 🙌

Want the eSports Bus to visit your campus? Learn more at: https://saisdfoundation.com/volunteer/stem-buses/

09/24/2026

The Big Give closes tonight at 6PM, and this afternoon your gift can go twice as far.

From 11:13–11:18 AM today, every donation to the SAISD Foundation through The Big Give will be matched up to $200 per gift, courtesy of the The Harvey E. Najim Charitable Foundation, while matching funds are available. The match lasts just five minutes, so we recommend having your donation ready to submit right as the clock strikes 11:13.

The SAISD Foundation has four more Unrestricted Match Minutes today:

10:13-10:14 AM
1:13–1:14 PM
3:13–3:14 PM
5:13–5:14 PM

If you have already given, thank you. Your support is already at work helping San Antonio ISD students— a certification pass rate at Edison that jumped from 55% to 72%, a welding program at Burbank that grew from 182 to 320 students, and a new scholarship helping this year's 17 Travis ECHS seniors stay on the path to becoming San Antonio's next teachers.

If you haven't given yet, timing your gift to one of these windows means it counts for double. And if today's window passes you by, you can still give through the end of the week.

Give now using this link: https://www.thebiggive.org/organization/saisd-foundation

09/23/2026

Seventeen students. One shared goal: come back and teach in the schools that raised them.

The 2026 graduating class at Travis Early College High School included 17 seniors who have spent their high school years earning college credit toward becoming teachers, San Antonio ISD’s own pathway for growing its future educators from within.

The SAISD Foundation helps fund that pathway, including a scholarship built specifically to close the gap dual credit leaves behind. Sara Mann and Samantha Gallegos, two former SAISD leaders with more than 50 years of combined experience in K-12 education, saw talented students lose momentum not because they lacked the ability to become teachers, but because of the cost of finishing the degree. Foundation support helps make sure that cost doesn't stop them.

And it doesn't end at graduation. Travis ECHS alumni who complete this pathway can go on to work as Emerging Educators, paid instructional roles in SAISD classrooms, while they finish their bachelor's degrees and teacher certifications, a program the Foundation also helps fund. It's the full arc of what "growing your own" actually looks like: a student, then a scholarship recipient, then a paid educator in the classroom that raised them.

Your gift during the Big Give helps fund this program and others like it, giving students who have already chosen to teach in San Antonio the ability to see that choice through, from their first classroom to their own.

Read their full story here: https://saisdfoundation.com/travis-echs-teacher-scholarship/

Give now using this link: https://www.thebiggive.org/organization/saisd-foundation

09/23/2026

Tonight at 6PM, San Antonio’s citywide day of giving begins, The Big Give, and the SAISD Foundation is asking for your support.

Across our district, San Antonio ISD students are earning industry certifications, college credit, and market-ready skills before they even walk the graduation stage. In pharmacy technical training, welding, medical assisting, and in the classrooms of their own future students. Last year, 275 students earned industry credentials and 164 earned associate degrees, both outpacing district averages. With continued support this year, we're working toward 350 college credentials.

Every one of those numbers represents a student whose future changed because someone believed it was worth investing in.

The Big Give starts at 6PM tonight: https://www.thebiggive.org/organization/saisd-foundation

09/22/2026

🎉SURPRISE, Sam Houston High School, SAISD Band! 🎉

Today, the SAISD Foundation surprised the Sam Houston High School band with a $5,000 grant to purchase concert chimes, kicking off our 2026–27 grant season, our 20th year of investing in San Antonio ISD students and teachers.

Under the leadership of band director Savannah King, the Sam Houston marching band has grown from 15 students to 26 in one year. It's the only band in San Antonio marching in the high-stepping, show-style tradition of HBCU bands, and as the ensemble grew, so did its ambitions. Ms. King began choosing more advanced concert music, but without chimes, students were playing those pieces without the parts their composers wrote. This grant closes that gap.

We were also thrilled to welcome Amazon.com, who announced a $20,000 investment to fund grants for SAISD educators this fall. Thank you for believing in our students!

Congratulations, Sam Houston Band. We can't wait to hear you. 🎶

09/22/2026

What's Cool In School: Paying it Forward.

Meet Santa Lopez and Crystal Harrison from Crockett Academy, SAISD — proud supporters already giving through our "What's Cool in School" Employee Giving Campaign! 💙💛

Every year, gifts from SAISD Foundation employees like them help fund nearly 800 educator grants and 250 scholarships and emergency gap awards for our students. And giving is easy: start at just $5/month through payroll deduction, with a bandana, t-shirt, or quarter-zip to show for it at each level.

Ready to join your SAISD colleagues? Learn more at the link below 🍎

https://saisdfoundation.com/donate/employee-giving/

09/18/2026

What's Cool in School: A Night of Music, A Legacy of Culture

Last night at Legacy Park, San Antonio ISD schools took the stage for A Night of Music. A Legacy of Culture. — and we couldn't be prouder of what we saw.

Harris Middle School, SAISD and Burbank High School, SAISD brought Ballet Folklórico to downtown San Antonio, while Fox Tech High School, SAISD/ALA, SAISD/CAST Tech students filled the night with Mariachi — both carrying forward a tradition that's decades older than any of them, with the kind of heart that makes you understand exactly why this music and these dances matter.

Every rehearsal after the bell, every stitch in a uniform, every hour a teacher spends passing down a tradition — it all led to last night, and these students carried it beautifully.

None of it happens without the people who believe in it. We're deeply grateful to Impact San Antonio, whose partnership with the Foundation has helped enroll more than 700 elementary students in Ballet Folklórico across SAISD. Their investment gives SAISD students the instruction, resources, and space to grow into the performers we saw last night.

Thank you to City Council District 1 Councilwoman Dr. Sukh Kaur, and to Weston Urban and Legacy Park, for making last night possible. We're also grateful to the SAISD Foundation board members who joined us. And a special shoutout to Roland San Miguel-Realtor, who reminded us of the legacy of his beloved mother, Belle Ortiz, and the importance of mariachi music education in our public schools.

Because of y’all, this tradition has a future in SAISD.

To every student who took the stage last night: thank you for carrying this legacy forward. You made us proud!

And that's what's cool in school.

09/14/2026

Huge thanks to the San Antonio Express-News and reporter Vincent T. Davis for spending time with our Book Buddies Bus at Woodlawn Academy, SAISD and capturing exactly what this program is about: kids picking out books that are theirs to keep, no cost, no catch. 📚🚌

This year alone, Book Buddies will put 50,000 free books into the hands of San Antonio ISD students. Read the full story below. 👇

The Book Buddies Bus is a mobile library that brings books to San Antonio ISD students, aiming to help them develop a love for reading.

09/09/2026

What's Cool in School? Sparked by big ideas, funded by the SAISD Foundation.

A playground is more than a place to climb. A garden is more than a collection of plants. Shade is more than relief from the Texas sun.

These spaces tell students something important every day: You belong here. This place was built for you.

At the SAISD Foundation, we believe learning happens everywhere - not just inside a classroom. That's why Transforming Learning Spaces is one of our strategic priorities, and across San Antonio ISD, it's showing up in some pretty cool ways.

Last week, play got a serious upgrade at Robert B. Green Elementary at Riverside Park, SAISD, where we celebrated the grand opening of a new outdoor learning space - complete with water play, nature play, music equipment, and mud kitchens for Pre-K-2nd grade students. Gardopia Gardens helped design the space, weaving nature into every corner, and it's one of three SAISD campuses receiving this transformation through a grant from The Harvey E. Najim Charitable Foundation

"Thanks to the SAISD Foundation, our vision of a safe, engaging outdoor learning space has become a reality," said Principal Jennifer Soto. "From water play and mud kitchens to garden learning, our youngest Phoenix students can now learn, explore, and grow beyond the classroom walls."

When kids serve "soup" from a mud kitchen or chase "fish" through a water table, play becomes powerful learning - sparking creativity and social skills that follow them into the classroom and beyond.

It's happening across the district: shade structures at four elementary schools funded by The Charity Ball Association. New early childhood playground equipment at Beacon Hill Elementary, SAISD, thanks to the Valero Alamo Bowl. A full outdoor makeover at an SAISD elementary school every November, powered by H-E-B and Unilever volunteers for Texas Recycles Day.

Each project looks different. But they all create school spaces where students feel safe, want to explore, and build confidence through play.

That's what's cool in school.

09/08/2026

📚 Happy International Literacy Day! ✨

Over the past two school years, our Book Buddies Bus has delivered 103,903 books to 25,975 SAISD students — and every single one got to pick books to take home and keep, forever.

Because we believe literacy is a human right, and every child deserves a story of their own.

Want to help us put more books in more hands?
📚 Volunteer to sort books
🚌 Host a book drive
💙 Donate today

saisdfoundation.com/what-we-do-2/book-buddies