Educational foundation
announces four grants
By linda denicola
Staff Writer
FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP — The Freehold Township Foundation for Educa-tional Excellence awarded four grants to school district faculty members at the June 10 Board of Education meeting.
The grants will fund projects that will be undertaken in the 2003-04 school year in the township’s K-8 school district.
Two teachers at the Laura Donovan School, Ryan Eichner and Tami Camp-field, were awarded a grant for a project called "Target Heart Rate." The grant will provide for 20 heart rate monitors for the students. The monitors will show the children how to pace themselves while they exercise for a full 30 minutes at a good heart rate.
Victoria Landman, chairwoman for the foundation, explained that teachers submit a cost estimate with their project proposal. The cost of 20 heart rate monitors is $71.99, so the grant is for $1,439.
Five teachers at the Joseph J. Catena School, Karen Farrar, Barbara Slachta, Susie Grau, Cathleen Rosen and Laura Cecilione, will use the money for their project, "We Both Read," a program that will enhance parent involvement and support for early literacy development.
This grant provides funding for specially selected reading books and packets to be sent home with first grade students. Using the specially developed books, parents will read aloud from the left side of the text and the students will read the right side. Landman said the teachers received a grant for $658, the cost of five mini libraries and journals with special envelopes for carrying the books home and back to school.
Three other Catena School teachers, Rosemarie Polo, Sandy Craig and Frank Colvin, will receive a grant for their "Ready, Set, Leap!" program. The funds will purchase the commercially produced Leap Frog Pad and support materials to be incorporated into the kindergarten literacy centers for regular use by the kindergarten pupils. The grant provides enrichment and reinforcement to kindergarten pupils in the area of phonemic awareness.
The teachers received a grant for $1,339, the cost of two complete Leap Pad programs, Landman said.
A grant in the amount of $510 will help Kerry Tormey, a teacher at the Eisenhower Middle School, implement her "Reading An Artifact" program. The grant will provide for an historian from the Monmouth County Historical Association to bring a trunk full of authentic local artifacts to each of Tormey’s social studies classes. Pupils will be able to examine the artifacts to find clues about the past and learn about the people who used them, as well as the world in which they lived.
The Freehold Township Foundation for Educational Excellence, which was established in 1999, has awarded 35 educational grants to date and gifted more than $35,000 to the district’s schools. Founded by a group of community leaders, the foundation’s mission is to help achieve and maintain an extra margin of excellence by employing private resources to complement traditional school funding.
The focus is to encourage excellence through creative teaching, to facilitate student development and foster community-school partnerships. The foundation funds major projects, but also enables faculty members to undertake innovative classroom projects throughout the district by awarding numerous small grants, according to information provided by the foundation.
"It is very, very encouraging to see the great effort the teachers put into these projects. It’s extra work for them," Landman said, adding that the foundation received nine proposals for funding during this grant period. Four of the proposals met the criteria, which includes being project based, while the others did not.
Landman said the foundation’s funding comes from a number of different sources, including direct mail campaigns, teacher tribute campaigns, an annual campaign, in-kind donations and from specific events.