HLOE's mission is to provide a safe, nurturing environment for our children to learn and grow.

We're asking for State Farm's help meeting a very important need in our community: making our elementary school safer. Our PA system is in dire need of updating, and we also need better cameras to monitor our school's entrances. Our current PA system is original from the time our school was built in the 1970's. Some speakers work, some don't, and it seems like a few more speakers go out each year. It's an annoyance on a normal day, but in an emergency it's a serious safety risk to not be able to communicate quickly and clearly with teachers throughout the building. Every school day, we're trusted with our community's 455 most important people "our children" and we take that responsibility very seriously. We're responsible for helping each and every one of them reach his or her full potential, and a HUGE piece of that puzzle is giving them a safe, welcoming place in which to learn and grow. State Farm's assistance would help us do exactly that!

A $25,000 Neighborhood Assistance grant would allow us to make these critical safety improvements to our school while continuing to devote sufficient funds to our teachers' and students' work in the classroom. It's no secret that times are tight in Kentucky's public schools, and have been for some time. State funding for public education including for safety and facility upgrades continue to be cut, even as costs rise and our school buildings age. We're in a difficult spot. We need to make these safety upgrades to our school, but at the same time we don't want to take away from the precious funds we have to spend on our kids' educational experiences. This assistance would be a godsend for our students, our school and our community, because it would help us meet this pressing need without sacrificing another. The grant would go primarily toward upgrading our school's PA system, and possibly surveillance cameras depending on the final cost of the PA upgrades.

Making our school safer will make our community stronger, and that's an investment that will impact our community for decades to come. Making sure our kids have a safe school in which to learn is especially important in our community, because a lot of our kids don't go back to a safe home. Safety's on the minds of a lot of our students. Many of them are so young they can't verbalize it, but we see it in their behavior. When they come to school they know they're going to be cool when it's hot, and warm when it's cold. They're going to get two meals for free. They're going to have a teacher who says "I love you," and hugs them. Our kids need a place where they feel completely safe and at ease enough to learn. Big picture, having a successful, safe school will keep families in the area, draw new ones in, and provide a solid foundation from which our future leaders can grow and thrive. There's no better way to have a lasting impact in our community than to safeguard and educate our kids.