Major donation, ‘very generous people in Wichita’ will help children learn to read

Someone asked Jeanine Phillips, co-founder and executive director of the Fundamental Learning Center, how she was doing the other day.

“I said, ‘I am pinching myself to make sure that this isn’t a dream.’ ”

That’s because in a difficult pandemic year when so many have already been so generous to the school’s $20 million capital campaign, the Wallace Foundation has made a second donation — $1.5 million on top of the $1 million it gave the campaign last year — that puts the school within striking distance of a $2 million Mabee Foundation challenge grant.

The center, which teaches children with dyslexia and their educators, needs to raise $5.8 million by Jan. 14, 2021, to receive the challenge grant for the future school at the northeast corner of 143rd and Central.

“The Dwane L and Velma Lunt Wallace Charitable Foundation is pleased to provide support to the Fundamental Learning Center and their ongoing efforts to eliminate literacy barriers, especially for children with dyslexia,” said a statement from the family foundation.

Roger D. Lowe, who is involved with the center and the building committee in several ways, said it is the belief in the center’s goals on the part of Wallace Foundation trustees and the Wallace daughters “that brought about the magnificent gift.”

Phillips, too, said, “They listen, they care, they understand.”

Thanks to that donation along with others, the center is now $430,000 away from meeting the challenge grant, which would then put it at the $15.3 million it needs for the building and grounds. The remainder of the $20 million raised will be for endowments for education and operations.

The center raised $10 million through a quiet campaign it started more than two years ago.

The current school accommodates 60 students. The new one will have 120 students.

The new building will be heavily influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright’s design principles and by an actual rendering he made for a building at Wichita State University that was never built.

“Once we get the Mabee $2 million, the shovel goes in the ground and the building will be paid for,” said Dana Hensley, co-chair of the campaign.

“It’s just come together amazingly well,” she said.

“That’s a lot of money for a nonprofit to raise in a city the size of Wichita. . . . There’s an awful lot of very generous people in Wichita.”

Hensley said the fundraising has been a stressful process but a rewarding one, too.

“It was a little intimidating, but it was also something that I felt so strongly about.”

Phillips said she’s been confident along the way because she knows the center has such a far reach in the community and beyond, but she said the pandemic gave her pause.

“Seriously, when COVID . . . hit right smack dab at the beginning of our Mabee challenge, I thought how do we move forward (and) talk to the community about a new building right now in these times?” Phillips said. “I will tell you, I really struggled with that.”

She said potential donors are receptive to learning about how to help children with reading and writing issues.

“COVID has helped us understand better how poorly kids are reading right now.”

Phillips said the fundraising team has done an incredible job.

“I would tell you it just comes out of passion and knowledge,” she said.

“People have come to understand a vision.”

Phillips said her parents knew Dwane and Velma Wallace some, and she met Velma Wallace a couple of times.

“I wish I would have known her better.”

Jennifer Remsberg, the center’s director of marketing and communications, said she came across a quote from Shirley Beggs, wife of former Wichita State University President Don Beggs, that perfectly “sums up this whole event.”

Beggs, speaking about Velma Wallace, said, “If it improved the quality of life for people in Wichita, she was for it.”