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Schools foundation gives record amount of grants for 2019-20

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Photo by Jon Anderson.

The Hoover City Schools Foundation this year is giving out a record $64,000 in grants, thanks to successful fundraising initiatives, Executive Director Janet Turner said.

The foundation this year gave out 31 grants totaling $49,380 in its regular round of grant awards, compared to 16 grants totaling $22,000 last year, Turner said.

Additionally, the group is giving out five grants of about $3,000 apiece to groups of teachers and students working on special projects through the foundation’s SeedLAB program.

The record number of grants was made possible primarily because the foundation’s signature fundraising event in April, Denim and Dining, netted more than $50,000 this year, greatly outperforming the previous three years the event has been held, Turner said.

“It was close to double what we had done in the past,” she said.

Plus, the foundation had continued support from the city and corporate donors and a successful “Commit to 36” campaign, in which the foundation asks people to donate $1 for each of the 36 weeks in the school year, Turner said.

Turner said it’s a good thing that fundraising went well because the foundation also had a record number of grant applications this year. There were 89 letters of interest seeking a total of $139,000, she said. The foundation asked 42 of those to submit applications and ended up funding 31 requests.

This year, there were several grant requests from teachers looking for ways to help students who have special sensory needs, such as students on the autism spectrum or other students who need sensory breaks during the day.

Grant money will help pay for things such as a sensory wall, which is a wall decoration with various textures, colors and shapes. The sensory input of looking at or touching the wall can be very calming for some children, allowing them to focus better or relieve stress or anxiety, some pediatric therapists say.

The foundation also had numerous grant requests dealing with robotics and coding. “Coding continues to be a big focus in all grades, K-12,” Turner said.

The SeedLAB program pays for selected teachers to attend a two-day design-thinking workshop during the summer to brainstorm ways to tackle special projects. SeedLAB grant recipients get up to $3,000 to develop and implement their ideas, plus money to cover substitutes for two days during the school year so the teams can spend dedicated time collaborating on their projects.

This year, for the first time, the foundation gave a SeedLAB grant to four members of the foundation’s student board and challenged the students to find ways to encourage others to use social media in a positive way instead of the negative ways that sometimes surface.

A team of teachers from Bluff Park Elementary will try to find ways to help support students who have experienced trauma, such as the loss of a loved one or pet, Turner said. Another team from Bluff Park Elementary is trying to come up with better ways to implement positive behavior intervention strategies.

A team of teachers from Gwin Elementary is working to find ways to help girls with low self-esteem, while another team of teachers from Rocky Ridge Elementary and Hoover High is exploring ways to create a more inclusive school climate that helps all kinds of students feel welcome and valued. For example, the teachers may look for ways to make reading lists and library collections more relevant to students from a variety of cultures, Turner said.

The foundation has allocated $25,000 in total for this year’s SeedLAB program, Turner said.

Here’s a look at the projects that received regular grant money this year.

2019-20 GRANTS

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