Education was always essential for the Bailiff family.
So before Norma Bailiff died in 2013, she said her life savings — which included money she had inherited from her parents, William and Rose Bailiff, decades earlier — should help students.
“They just believed in education,” Gail Gaylord, Norma’s niece, said about her family. “You couldn’t get anywhere unless you had an education. You needed it.”
On Friday, the Bailiff family’s passion for education became its legacy.
The family announced a $750,000 donation to the Mounds View Schools Education Foundation that will fund the William, Rose and Norma Bailiff Memorial Scholarship for generations to come. It is the largest single donation in the foundation’s 30-year history.
“It’s pretty remarkable,” said Jonathan Weinhagen, president of the foundation’s board of trustees. “It is the largest gift by a significant multiplier. It is absolutely a game changer.”
The Bailiff family has been providing scholarships to Mounds View district students since shortly after Norma’s death. Gaylord and Weinhagen hope the move will allow the family’s memorial scholarships to be awarded annually for the next 30 years or more.
The scholarships are targeted to students who qualify for free and reduced-price meals, a federal indicator of poverty. Gaylord said with the cost of college climbing, it was important to her family to help low-income students achieve their dreams.
The scholarships will be awarded to students from both Irondale and Mounds View high schools. Some of the money will be dedicated to students who plan to attend two-year colleges, Gaylord said.
The focus of the Bailiff family’s scholarships fits well with the foundation’s priorities and the work of the district to close what’s called the “opportunity gap” between poor and minority students and their peers, said Weinhagen, who also sits on the school board.
“We are a school district that, for well over a decade, has been committed to equity in a very intentional way,” Weinhagen said. “It is something that has been a guiding principle in every policy decision.”
This year about 300 students applied for scholarships from the Mounds View Schools Education Foundation. In May, the foundation will award $127,000 to more than 80 students from the two high schools.
The Bailiff family will still take the lead in picking recipients of their scholarships. But donating their assets to the foundation will take away the burden of managing the money to keep the scholarship program sustainable.
“We want the fun part,” Gaylord said. “What we want to do is choose the kids.”