Shortly before the current school year started, administrators at Grant Bowler Elementary school in Logandale made a decision to discontinue a long-running volunteering program at the school called the Foster Granparents Program.

A nationwide literacy program sponsored by Catholic Charities, Foster Grandparents recruits volunteers aged 55 and over to go into schools and help teachers work with kids having difficulty at reading and writing. Each school has a site coordinator that builds each senior’s schedule by placing him/her in appropriate classrooms to help. The school is also required to provide lunches to the senior volunteers.

School officials said that, in the past, the program at Grant Bowler had been very successful with 8-9 volunteers. But more recently the program had dwindled down to only one senior volunteer.

Bowler principal Shawna Jessen said that, while the Foster Grandparent program is relatively simple for the school, it still requires some oversight and coordination from school administration.

“When the program is running at full speed it poses a bit of a burden on administration just in the way that it is structured,” Jessen said. “But when it is down to just one person, we couldn’t really see the benefits of working within that program.”

Jessen said that the school enjoys a tremendous amount of volunteer support from parents and the community.

“Each teacher has their helpers who come in faithfully,” Jessen said. “At any given time during the school day we have maybe 20 volunteers in the building helping in the classrooms.”

Jessen emphasized that seniors and other members of the community are always welcome to volunteer at the school.

“We don’t want this to seem like we are rejecting volunteers,” she said. “It is wonderful to have seniors in the community come in and help out and those that have helped us before are, of course, always welcome. But in this community, where volunteerism is so prevalent, we just didn’t feel like we needed the added complexity of an outside program for that.”