Demopolis Education Foundation awards over $50,000 to schools

Published 4:59 pm Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Westside Elementary teacher Teri Speegle expresses her pleasure when the Demopolis City Schools Foundation’s “Prize Patrol” visited her classroom Monday to award her a $5,775 grant. Speegle filed a grant application to help implement a schoolwide STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education program at WES.

Westside Elementary teacher Teri Speegle expresses her pleasure when the Demopolis City Schools Foundation’s “Prize Patrol” visited her classroom Monday to award her a $5,775 grant. Speegle filed a grant application to help implement a schoolwide STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education program at WES.

It was almost like Christmas morning for some teachers inside Demopolis schools as they were informed one-by-one that their requests for grant funds was being awarded.
Members of the Demopolis City Schools Foundation visited U.S. Jones and Westside elementary schools on Monday morning and spend Tuesday morning at Demopolis Middle School and Demopolis High School. In total, 19 grants were awarded totaling over $50,500.
The grants will be used for a variety of items and projects ranging from library books and board games to purchasing tablets for students and a drone for broadcasting.
“Some of the grants were awarded to fill certain needs. We also saw a lot of very creative grants, and we are very excited about that,” said Amanda Barnes, director of the Demopolis City Schools Foundation. “These funds will make a difference in providing for our kids and that is what the foundation is supposed to do.”
The grant process was opened to teachers in May and they had through the summer to submit their applications to the foundation. Once submitted, an eight-member committee reviewed the applications and evaluated them based on a fixed score card.
“It is a blind process … nobody knows who submitted the grant or who is getting their funding until the final report,” Barnes said.

For more information see the September 30 print edition of the Demopolis Times.

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