The Jim Schrankler Wolf Ridge Endowment

Since the mid 1970s, students from Saint Anthony Park Elementary have had the priviledge to learn outdoors for a whole week at Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center (previously known as Environmental Learning Center at Isabella).  

No student is ever prevented from attending Wolf Ridge because of financial need.  For the past few years, people in the community have generously given one-time donations to cover the cost of student attendance scholarships.  

In 2024, to honor the retirement of long-time SAP Elementary science specialist, Jim Shrankler, The Saint Anthony Park School Association started an endowment fund through the Saint Paul and Minnesota Foundation. With a guaranted 5% annual return on investment, this endowment will provide Wolf Ridge scholarships for students at SAP Elementary for years to come!!

At Saint Anthony Park Elementary, we believe that ALL students deserve the opportunity to encounter the outdoors and to experience enrichment moments in nature.  

However, over the past few years, the percentage of St. Anthony Park Elementary students receiving free and reduced lunch has greatly increased.   At first glance, this may seem to point to a concerning increase in poverty among our students.  From another perspective, however, we believe this trend represents an opportunity for more of Saint Paul’s students to share in the supportive, rigorous, and enriching academic community and tradition for which SAP is known.  Integral to this tradition is the culminating, fifth grade experience at Wolf Ridge. 

Additionally, our demographics have shifted and now 47% of our students identify as BIPOC.  Research shows that people of color are far less likely to engage in nature-based outdoor recreation activities, with historic discrimination being a large underlying factor.  While the easy choice during financial strain would be to pivot and move our extracurricular adventures to a more affordable or accessible option, Saint Anthony Park Elementary has long benefited from the outstanding programming at Wolf Ridge and we believe all SAP fifth graders, including, and especially our BIPOC students, deserve to experience the North Shore classroom as well.  The school’s tradition of visiting Wolf Ridge is essential to its identity.  While we all hear and read of tight budgets and the need to scale back and lower standards, we hope to retain and celebrate this unique opportunity for all our students as a reminder to them of their worth and our belief in their futures.    

Join SAPSA in our efforts to ensure kids at SAP Elementary will have the opportunity to learn in the great outdoors for years to come and donate to the Jim Shrankler Wolf Ridge Endowment fund!