This year, Lookout In The Classroom is serving more than half of Santa Cruz County’s 12,000 high school students – reaching throughout the area’s 10 school districts. We’ve won national recognition – a case study is in the works – and now we want to do more.

Director of Student and Community Engagement Jamie Garfield has built this initiative, from its inception three years ago. She has innovated a broad program that includes free access for public high school students, provides workshops and curriculum on media literacy, organizes an annual scholarship contest, and sends weekly Educator Alerts and other highly useful and tailored curriculum. The big idea: make local news more visible and easier to access every day in our schools. With your support, we will not only be able to continue providing these resources, but we can increase our reach into classrooms and provide more in-depth connections with our youth and educators.

“Lookout represents a key partner to help us in our work towards critical thinking and helping our students feel a sense of relevance,” Faris Sabbah, Santa Cruz County’s superintendent of schools, tells us of the program. ”They've started a journalism scholarship. They offer quizzes and instructional materials for teachers to use that really adheres to California standards. It helps connect students to the community and they have created a space for students to be able to express themselves and to publish their content.”

Please help us bring the students of today (and voters of tomorrow) into Santa Cruz County’s civic conversation – around factual and discussable local news – with the guidance of good teachers.

Many of you celebrated with us in May, as Lookout Santa Cruz won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News, a certification of our work. Help us share that work with our local students.

Every dollar contributed here builds a stronger and bigger Lookout In The Classroom program. Please support it today.

You may make your gift securely online by hitting the donate button or by sending a check made out to our nonprofit partner, Local Media Foundation. Checks should include “Lookout in the Classroom Santa Cruz County” on the memo line. Checks can be mailed to:

Local Media Foundation
P.O. Box 85015
Chicago, IL 60689-5033

For any questions, please contact:

Ken Doctor, Founder & CEO of Lookout Local ken@lookoutlocal.com

Jamie Garfield, Director, Community and Philanthropic Engagement jamie@lookoutlocal.com

Lookout’s program is designed to make sure the people of Santa Cruz County have access to a steady stream of trusted, civic-essential news and information to support the local democracy.

Donations to Local Media Foundation for this program are tax-deductible to the extent of the law. Please consult a tax adviser for details. No goods or services are provided in exchange for donations. This program is administered by Local Media Foundation, tax ID #36-4427750, a Section 501(c)(3) charitable trust affiliated with Local Media Association.

The Lookout Santa Cruz Support Fund

By Local Media Foundation

The Lookout Santa Cruz Support Fund