Education Foundation Awards $9,600 Grant

The Chatham Education Foundation (CEF) awarded a grant to the School District of the Chathams of $9,600 to go toward the purchase of a Pearsons Education Developmental Reading Assessment Management System.

The system will help give assessment-driven reading instruction to students in grades 1 through 5, and will help teachers assess student reading levels.

Faculty at Lafayette Avenue School, Milton Avenue School, Southern Boulevard School and Washington Avenue School will be able to use the system.

The grant request was submitted by the district's Supervisor of English Language Arts K-5 Helen S. Comba and by the principals of the aforementioned schools.

Colleen Markley, the president of CEF, said this system will help teachers "better evaluate the reading capabilities of district students."

Comba, speaking on behalf of all those who submitted the grant application, said the system will help teachers better assess student progress and will help "make decisions about instructional practices. We are all looking forward to using this resources and seeing how it will help us to better meet the reading needs of our students."

"Thanks to the generosity of local residents and businesses the Chatham Education Foundation is able to provide funds for innovative programs that benefit students and teachers alike," Markley said.

This is the fifth grant CEF has awarded this year, bringing the total value of grants to $41,600. Other grants include:

• Chatham Middle School Principal Robert Accardi and eighth grade English teachers Lisa McTague and Carmela Zack received a grant to acquire 16 Netbooks for students to use in order to promote and enhance writing across the curriculum.
• Chatham High School (CHS) Theatre Director Lynn Polan arranged for the CHS theater students, actors and crew members to learn about the technology and artistry of theatrical lighting by working with a professional lighting designer. The lighting designer will also work with students to design and implement the lighting for the spring musical, "Legally Blonde".
• Lafayette Avenue School fourth grade students in Justin Perinotti’s classes will be completing challenges from Destination ImagiNation, Inc. Teams of students will build, engineer and perform tasks with sets of given materials to accomplish an initiative. The program will strengthen students' math, science, communications and problem solving skills and teach them flexibility in the face of given challenges.
• Principals at Lafayette Avenue School, Milton Avenue School, Washington Avenue School and Southern Boulevard School won a $19,300 grant for the purchase of a STARLAB Portable Planetarium.

CEF grants are awarded on a rolling deadline throughout the school year. In the 2011-12 school year CEF awarded $66,000 through 26 different grants throughout the School District of the Chathams.