Grant Writing - A Lambert

Having spent the last 13 years in the finance side of education, my grant skills are more in the realm of administering and spending the money. However, I found the information in the Grant Writing Module to be very useful. Outside of work and school, I am Girl Scout leader and a PTO member. Currently, both groups have decided to take on HUGE projects that grants would help out greatly with. Within the last few years, our county deconsolidated our central middle school and placed fifth and sixth grades back in elementary school. While the county passed a bond to construct new classrooms to house these grades at the elementary schools, some of plans were not well thought out. Additionally, my daughter's school became the center for special education students in the county this year. That coupled with bringing back fifth and sixth grade has way overloaded my daughter's school. The place this presents itself the most is in the gymnasium/cafeteria/multi-purpose room. Currently, this room will not accomodate the entire student body, nor is there enough room or time in the day for all classes to have gym and lunch. After approaching the county board and being informed there is no money for an additional gymnasium, the PTO has decided to raise the money for the project. I spent several hours scanning for health, fitness or special needs grants.

I found it interesting that several people mentioning looking for grants to fund classroom sets of iPads. While I think this is a wonderful idea, I work in a county where the high school was offered a classroom set of iPads through GearUp and had to refuse them. The technology coordinator would not allow them on the county network. Not currently being a teacher, I'm having a difficult time determining what the current technology needs are within the schools. During a conversation with a business education teacher recently, I learned that the business department does not have SmartBoards. I cannot imagine teaching technology without the technology needed to teach it. Most of the elementary schools and the middle school in the county have SmartBoards in every classroom. These were funded through ARRA money; however, the business department did not receive them because it was believed they could be purchased through vocational grants. Vocational grants state that nothing can be purchased with a vocational grant that is provided for everyone else. Therefore, they couldn't use vocational money to purchase SmartBoards when everyone else got them with ARRA money and that money was gone. School finance is some difficult stuff with too much red tape.

In my research for SmartBoard funding, I found the following article "Looking for Funding in all the Wrong Places?" Additionally, I found digitalwish.org.