Foundation provides grants for educational programs

Grants provided by the Foundation for the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional Schools are improving the schools’ programs, projects and resources.

Dotty Porcaro, president of the Manalapan Englishtown Regional School District Board of Education, said the grants are wonderful for the school district.

“I am always excited to see new things coming to the district that are great for the students,” Porcaro said. “The foundation has been phenomenal over the past few years for us and our students.”

Eight grants totaling $34,876 were recently made by the foundation and accepted by the school board. The grants are the following:

 Physics Day, Taylor Mills School, $450

 Lego Story Starter, Milford Brook School, $1,091

 Teaching with Reading Assistant Inspires Literacy, Wemrock Brook School, $3,500

 The Bass Project, Clark Mills School, Milford Brook School, Pine Brook School, Wemrock Brook School, $5,000

 MakerSpace, Pine Brook Space, $8,500

 ST Math, Milford Brook School, Taylor Mills School, Clark Mills School, $12,600

 Leveled Books, Lafayette Mills School, $1,500.

 MakerSpace in Media Center, Clark Mills School, $2,235

Pat Berger, the president of the Foundation for the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional Schools, said the foundation consists of parents and community members. She said principals and the superintendent of schools review the grant applications.

“Teachers, supervisors and administrators can submit grant requests for anything involving professional enrichment,” Berger said. “What we look for in a grant is a project, program or resource that will affect a large number of students in a school or in the district.”

Berger provided a brief description of each grant:

 The Lego Story Starter, applied for by Lisa Garnett, requests additional starter kits and curriculum software that serves as tools for literacy instruction. It will be used to kick start creativity and boost reading, writing, speaking and listening skills.

 The MakerSpace in the media center at Clark Mills School, applied for by Gail Murray, is an effort to continue to create relevant and rigorous learning spaces where library media specialists and special subject educators can be forward thinking as they design innovative ways to offer students a means to work through real and personally meaningful experiences.

 The Teaching with Reading Assistant Inspires Literary Success project, applied for by Sari Laurence, is a reading intervention program that uses reading assistance to supplement literacy interventions already in place at Wemrock Brook School.

 The bass project, applied for by Victoria June, requests instruments for music education at the Wemrock Brook, Clark Mills, Milford Brook and Pine Brook schools.

 The MakerSpace grant, applied for by John Spalthoff, allows Pine Brook School to expand its MakerSpace classroom with items identified as worthwhile components to the educational program.

 The ST Math Program, applied for by Jodi Pepchinski, Kerry Marsala, Jayme Orlando and Gregory Schmidt, is already being successfully implemented at the Lafayette Mills and Wemrock Brook schools with exceptional results, according to the foundation.

This application focuses on expanding its use to the rest of the grade one through five schools in the district.

ST Math is a web-based software program created by Mind Research and it presents a “unique math education process that engages the learner’s spatial temporal reasoning abilities to explain, understand and solve multi-step problems.”

 The Physics Day grant, applied for by Sharyn Fisher, allows Taylor Mills School to rent an inflatable slide which serves as a hands-on experiment regarding friction and speed.

 The leveled books proposal, applied for by Allison Rogers and Mindy Musillo, requests funds to purchase leveled fiction and nonfiction books for the Lafayette Mills book room.