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Amador Valley Scholarships, Inc. (AVSI), one of Pleasanton’s longest-standing scholarship nonprofits, recently awarded over $100,000 in combined scholarships to 33 high school seniors during its annual award ceremony in south Pleasanton.
The event, which was held on May 16, brought in students from Amador Valley, Foothill, Village and even Dublin high schools to celebrate their achievement of receiving sometimes multiple scholarships at once with their families.
Joshua Skrzypczak, a graduating senior from Foothill who won three separate scholarships that day, said he appreciated how the scholarships have now given him the opportunity and the ability to go to the school of his choice — University of California, Santa Barbara — without having any financial burdens.
“Amador Valley Scholarships is able to let us really achieve our dreams and really go for what we want to go for,” Skrzypczak told the Weekly.
The scholarship program first started all the way back in 1952 when three Pleasanton teachers, including well-known educator Thomas Hart — who eventually got a middle school named after him — got an idea to put on a comedy show called “Scholarship Frolics” in order to raise money for scholarships for Amador Valley graduates who planned on entering the teaching profession, according to Mary Hart Reding.
Reding is the president of AVSI and was a Pleasanton Unified School District teacher for 33 years. She is also one of Hart’s daughters.
According to Reding, the comedy show brought schools and community organizations together to raise money for a worthy cause, but as Pleasanton grew, the show began to lose its appeal.
That’s why in 1965 the AVSI became an official nonprofit organization. While the organization began awarding scholarships to only Amador Valley seniors at that time, because it was the only high school in Pleasanton, the program has since grown to award scholarships for Foothill, Village and Dublin.
According to the organization’s website, in the past 59 years it has awarded nearly $1.1 million in scholarships to over 800 students from all four schools.
Sarah Schaefer, executive director at the Museum on Main, told the Weekly that while she did not have any specific documents saying so, she spoke with various longtime teachers who said AVSI is indeed one of the oldest nonprofits that is still giving out scholarships to this day in Pleasanton.
“I think this is a legacy,” Anna Haddad Molz, AVSI secretary and Amador Valley alumna, told the Weekly.
In addition to the general scholarships AVSI awards, it also serves as an administrator for 17 memorial scholarships that are set up by families who have lost someone and want to honor that person by helping fund students in their memory.
“We are this group that came together, not by choice,” Kathleen Hart-Hinek, vice president of AVSI, said during her opening speech at the May 16 award ceremony. “We all suffered the loss of a loved one but our common bond is that we all want our loved ones to live on through the lives of students.”
Hart-Hinek is Reding’s sister and one of Hart’s other daughters. Like her sister, Hart-Hinek also graduated from Amador Valley and said she believes in the work the two are doing with the organization.
“We just want to give back to these amazing kids on behalf of our parents,” Hart-Hinek told the Weekly.
According to Reding, this year the organization had to choose 33 students out of 80 applicants and while her and Hart-Hinek said it never gets easier to narrow down the list of applicants, they are constantly surprised by the students each year.
“It gives you a sense of hope for the new generation,” Reding told the Weekly. “These kids are amazing. The things they are doing are just totally amazing.”
“It’s just a wonderful experience to do this,” she added. “These kids are really just the cream of the crop.”
For students like Skrzypczak, who plans on majoring in history of public policy and law, he said that he was just appreciative of the fact that he lives in a place like Pleasanton where the tight knit community looks out for each other and supports their students.
“We all care for one another and that’s really reflective of what Pleasanton really is,” Skrzypczak said. “Pleasanton just allows teens and kids like us to really grow in an amazing community.”
