In early 2020, Poenta Luckie, then president of the Rotary Club of Fairhope, solicited grant requests from local schools.

Fairhope Elementary School and Fairhope Intermediate School, anticipating their needs as they reorganized into two K–6 schools, requested Leveled Literacy Intervention materials for the grades they were not currently serving. These LLI kits are crucial in remedial reading instruction (responsible for an improvement from D to A in reading scores at Fairhope Elementary School) but also very expensive. Although the Covid situation was rapidly evolving, it was already clear that the club’s annual fundraiser would have to be canceled, so the club had to be conservative in its donations, but it was able to allocate $10,500 for each school.

The funds were disbursed before the beginning of the 2020–21 school year, but only recently was the club able to make a ceremonial check presentation to school officials.