Lake Country Now: At the age of 66 (going on 40 as she says) Jan Frans is pumped. The retired Kettle Moraine Middle School teacher’s Oasis Project took off faster than she could have imagined and now the project is reaching under-resourced students in two additional Kettle Moraine elementary schools this year.
Starting the tutoring project in September 2015 at Cushing Elementary School, about 30 Oasis Project tutors, all retired or working teachers, now work with under-resourced students at Dousman Elementary and Wales Elementary schools as well.
Some may think the Lake Country area doesn’t need services for under-resourced children, but Frans said the most shocking thing is that about 13 percent of children in the Cushing Elementary area are living at or below the poverty level and about 18 percent in Dousman and Wales.
Under-resourced children may also come from single parent homes where a child doesn’t have someone at home to support their work, Frans added.
The idea of the project was “like something I couldn’t shake,” said Frans.
“I couldn’t not do it,” Frans said. “I couldn’t get to the end of my life and wonder what it would have been like if I had tried.”
Frans spent a year visiting non profit organizations thinking “I would see I can’t do this,” and discovered “no one knew what they were doing when they started.”