WILLIAMSBURG— The Williamsburg-James City County Schools Foundation recently held its annual Grant Awards Day.
WJCC Schools Foundation said there were a lot of neat projects, which is one of the things it likes about the innovative learning grant program.
In total, 36 grants were distributed, totaling approximately $75,000. Applications for grants were taken in November before being reviewed by a foundation committee, which sets the budget for how many grants can be funded.
Some of the grants awarded this year included Building Fast Fluency at Clara Byrd Baker Elementary by the Math Intervention team and the Graded Reader Library at James Blair Middle School.
Individual teachers were also awarded grants.
“I think it’s just a wonderful way to support teachers and to support our students,” said Grayson Moore, the Marketing Chair for the WJCC Schools Foundation, about the grant awards. “It really allows them to be able to maximize learning opportunities.”
These grant awards have helped a variety of aspects of students’ lives, from sensory to reading to fluency to phonics. Grants also help with music and the arts, not just typical reading and writing.
“It’s been a really pivotal year for us,” Moore said, mentioning the change in leadership that happened due to the passing of the previous president as well as the change in superintendent at WJCC. “Dr. Keever has done an outstanding job with the school division and his leadership, and our current president, Jim Kelly, has done an outstanding job of taking over and helping us through what was a difficult year, but we were really able to bounce back.”
Four teams of two or three went out to various schools, where they walked into the teachers’ classrooms and gave them their grants.
“It’s one of the fun parts of being on the foundation, to see the teachers and their reactions to getting their grants,” said Jim Kelly, the current president of the WJCC Schools Foundation.
“It’s great to see the support that this community has for public education, and to see the innovative ideas from the teachers, and being able to support that and to support classroom innovations is very proud of for all the foundation and for our donors,” Kelly continued.
To learn more about the WJCC Schools Foundation, visit the official website.
