From The Achieve Foundation of South Orange & Maplewood:
You can do a lot of different things with $3,000: You can build a garden, take more than 100 high school students to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, create a space that allows children to calm and collect themselves, sponsor an assembly that allows students to hear the stories of a Holocaust survivor, or outfit an 8th grade classroom with graphing calculators.
If you’re the Achieve Foundation, you can do all those things, and more. Thanks to a successful cycle of fundraising and generous donations, Achieve was able to award nearly $50,000 last month to dozens of teacher-generated projects across the district. A farm to school program at South Mountain, the field trip to the Met for CHS art students, a regulation station at Marshall School, a visit from Holocaust survivor and author Marion Blumenthal Lazan to Maplewood Middle, and graphing calculators for South Orange Middle Schoolers all had price tags around the $3,000 mark, but they are just a few of the grants Achieve recently provided to educators across the district.
Of the $94K in requests for 42 projects that Achieve received during this application process, 32 were approved and 28 were fully funded. A few programs were partially funded, and Achieve asked the public to add to those open grants. Columbia High School art teacher Nicole Thomas initially received $5,000 toward a $7,736 pugmill for the ceramics room that will recycle clay, and donors quickly responded and covered the balance. Three other CHS art department requests were just fulfilled this week: one allowing for the purchase of cameras that work with larger negatives for photography students; another for a student trip to the Museum of Modern Art; and a third that enables CHS art students to participate in the New Jersey Teen Arts Festival.
Some of the money for these grants was provided by the Pollock Arts Initiative (PAI), which supplements arts-oriented grants through the Foundation. The PAI provided generous support to the pugmill and photography equipment grants, and also contributed nearly $4,000 to buy new mouthpieces for freshman band participants at Columbia. The mouthpieces allow student musicians to elevate the playing experience and sound production from their instruments as they grow.
In addition to the Arts, this round of grants addresses a wide range of SEL, cultural awareness, literacy, STEM, and special education needs. Achieve paid for SEL tools and a Social Emotional Learning expert to provide training to the five kindergarten teachers at Seth Boyden, three of whom are new. Grants also provided new books for several classrooms there. The Foundation funded a series of Asian Cultural celebrations at both middle schools; and gave a grant to Mary-Alice Zavocki, an MMS science teacher, that will allow students to design, evaluate and build models of vehicles, in hopes of getting them to problem solve like engineers. To get everyone at MMS to do more math, math teachers there will be creating monthly math problems that all students will be invited to solve. Anyone who gives a correct answer will be entered into a drawing, and monthly winners will receive prizes. Sixth graders at MMS will have the opportunity to dress up as their favorite literary characters thanks to a costume closet conceived of by English teacher Tracee Jones and paid for by Achieve. And students in a self-contained classroom at SOMS will get to visit local businesses to shop for community-based instruction, which allows them to practice social skills and handling money.
Grants paid for new drums for music classes at Clinton and South Mountain, and for therapy dogs to visit Columbia. The Foundation funded college visits for CHS students from low-income families and the chance for a 2nd grade inclusion class at Seth Boyden to write, edit and publish a class book of student poetry. It gave Clinton librarian Jen Latimer money to expand her collection of Ecotopian works, including books focused on sustainable farming and life below water.
“Twice a year, teachers and staff members make financial requests to either enhance or share passions with their school community/SOMD. Not only is it exciting to read about the projects that are submitted, but it is also fulfilling to award grants that will help bring those projects to fruition. SOMSD students have a phenomenal group of educators who care about their educational and social development. Achieve is proud to be able to share in their development by providing the necessary funding,” shared grants committee co-chair Shona Hendry.
A list of all 32 grants approved by the organization’s Board of Trustees this fall can be found on the Achieve Foundation website. A second round of grant awards will be announced in February, and all South Orange-Maplewood School District faculty are encouraged to apply by December 30th for Achieve funding.
———————————————————-
The Achieve Foundation of South Orange & Maplewood is a registered 501(c)3 organization that promotes high-quality education that prepares South Orange-Maplewood School District students for the future. We support our students, families and educators by addressing inequities, inspiring innovation and fostering community. Since 1999, Achieve has invested over $4.5 million for programs that further public education in our two towns. To learn more, please visit achievefoundation.org.
