Every year, hundreds of private donors and businesses in West Alabama give to the Demopolis City Schools Foundation to invest in public education excellence. This year is no exception, and through those gifts and investments, the Demopolis City Schools Foundation awarded classroom grants totaling more than $1.2 million since 1993.

For fall 2017, the 33-member board of the Demopolis City Schools Foundation announced that $38,000 in classroom grants will be awarded. These grants will be put to immediate use at each school in the Demopolis City School System. 

“Our grants this year really exemplify our strategic approach to grant making within the school system. We will always continue to fund unique teacher ideas, giving them an opportunity to test ideas. Susan Browder’s grant for math manipulatives is a good example of this type of grant,” explained Paul Miller, the Chairman of the Grants Committee.

“But we also want to focus on three strategic areas — collaboration, continuity and equity.  Deborah McAfee and Kim Browder’s grants for Chromebooks for the history departments at the middle and high school are great examples of a collaboration grant – both of them are working with other teachers to share resources and ideas. Carly Turner’s grant at the middle school ensures continuity with the computer programing and coding education that began last year at US Jones.  Amanda Smith’s grant to provide scientific calculators to every class at the middle school is a great example of equity — no matter what math teacher your child has, they will have access to the same technology in the classroom.”

“We had grant requests of over $111,000 this year and the committee had to make some hard choices about what projects to move forward. I want to thank our donors who trust the foundation each year to research, evaluate, and invest in these grants to make the biggest impact on all of our children’s futures,” said Amanda Barnes, Executive Director of the Foundation. 

For more information about donating to the DCSF, visit www.demopolis.org.

Following are the grants awarded for the fall cycle.

Demopolis High School

• $2,000 to Lisa Lawrence for the DHS library

• $2,500 to Demetrius Scott as a challenge grant to refurbish instruments for the River City Blue Marching Band

• $7,000 to Kim Browder for a classroom sets of Chromebooks for the history department

Demopolis Middle School

• $5,831.75 to Carly Turner for robots and iPads to support the vertical alignment of coding between US Jones and DMS

• $798 to Julie Foster for to begin a middle school scholars’ bowl team

• $1,903.77 to Susan Browder for manipulatives and resources for her sixth grade classroom to have a hands-on experience mastering math skills

• $2,031.56 to Amanda Smith for scientific calculators for every math classroom at DMS

• $2,000 to Ginger Godwin to increase the middle school library’s collection of books

• $7,000 to Deborah McAfee for a set of Chromebooks to use across the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade history department

US Jones Elementary

• $2,628 to Dana Hill for SPHERO robots to discover how simple programming can solve daily problems

• $2,000 to Emily Windham to purchase books and an ebook subscription service for the school library

• $599.10 to Jami Webb for fidget seats and fidget bands for student desks

Westside Elementary

• $2,000 to Andrea Johnson for fiction and information library books to enrich our library collection

The Demopolis City Schools Foundation is an independent nonprofit established in 1993 to encourage private charitable support of the Demopolis public school system. Governed by a 33-member Board of Directors, the Foundation has provided more than $1.2 million in classroom grants since its inception.  Follow the DCSF on Twitter @demopoliscsf and on Facebook @DemopolisCitySchoolsFoundation.