Photo by Jon Anderson.
Spain Park High School students Anna Kate Morris and Logan Bradley discuss what is happening with cars as they go through loops on the Hot Wheelstrack. Teachers at the school received a $350 grantfrom the Hoover City Schools Foundation to buy more Hot Wheels track to help teach scientific concepts such as speed, velocity, gravity, displacement, energy and force.
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 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 funded 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 students who need sensory breaks.
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.
Here’s a look at projects that received regular grant money this year in schools in the Spain Park High School feeder pattern.
2019-20 GRANTS
- Brain Buckets: Led by Maria Beard at Greystone Elementary, $1,000 to purchase engaging math, reading, writing and problem-solving activities for students who finish assignments early
- Create with KIBO: Led by Abra Wallis at Riverchase Elementary, $1,960 to buy a robot that lets early elementary students explore and apply programming skills
- Growing Through Sensory Exploration: Led by Katie Thompson at Riverchase Elementary, $1, 500 to expand the school garden to include a therapeutic area for sensory exploration
- Brainspring Phonics: Led by Catherine Sanford at Rocky Ridge Elementary, $2,000 to purchase additional phonics materials and use multi-sensory techniques to improve reading skills
- Start Strong with Phonics: Led by Erica Robinson at Rocky Ridge Elementary, $500 to buy phonemic awareness, phonics and word study games to practice foundational reading skills
- Physics of Hot Wheels: Led by Jennifer Bradley at Spain Park High, $350 purchase Hot Wheels tracks and accessories for labs and demonstrations of physics concepts, including speed, velocity, gravity, Newton’s laws, displacement, energy and force
- Solder Me Awake: Led by Scottie Wilson at Spain Park High, $1,075 for soldering materials so students can gain a better understanding of computer and electrical engineering, including DC circuits, printed circuit boards, electrical components and schematic drawings
- Sensing Our World: Led by Scottie Wilson at Spain Park High, $955 for a project whereby students gain hands-on engineering and computer science experience, creating programs to take measurements and data, using sensors and signal conditioning
