SANTA FE, TX, NOVEMBER 29 – Friday, November 19, was a date to behold when we paraded through all five campuses and the Cowan Administration building showering educators and employees with checks to fund their Grants for Great Ideas submissions from September! This event is impossible to put into words. The excitement, the anticipation, and the jubilation from all involved is truly special. It takes many leaders in Santa Fe ISD to come together to make this happen, and, after 2020, it was refreshing to be back to parading with the Santa Fe High School Drum Line, Santa Fe High School Cheer Team, the Santa Fe Indians Mascot, Santa Fe ISD Leaders, the Santa Fe TX Education Foundation Board of Directors, and even two Board Members dressed as turkeys for the occasion.
Starting at Santa Fe High School, the Foundation awarded 16 grants to 11 educators, meaning some received more than one funded project! Projects ranged from Robotics/Physics/Computer Programming for grades 9-12 with drones, spectrum tube and cathode ray tube, 10 Flinn Scientific lab kits, anthropology with comparative human bone sets, 10 BreakOut Boxes, explore the wonders of the human body for A&P students, inquiry labs for AP chemistry, aquatic science visual aids and interactive ocean lab kits, biology lab kits for AP students, physics kits for AP physics, grow racks for biology, creating a SFHS literary magazine, simulators/dose pads/vitals/demo pills/needles for medication administration for a CTE class, Lightbox interactive books, incubators, and rat dissection kits. The grand total awarded at the High School amounted to $39,482.73 in projects that can enhance instruction and education in these classrooms!
The next stop on the route brought us to Santa Fe Junior High, where they received $12,240.19 in grants for a variety of projects. They include flexible seating for students with autism, learning disabilities, emotional disturbances, ADHD, etc; cordless microscopes with charger cords to allow students to become comfortable with using microscopes in their investigations that will prepare them for a college class or future career; the study of the electromagnetic spectrum with spectroscopes allowing students to see the different lights that certain gases emit; Building the Troops literacy project to add a total of 225 fiction and nonfiction titles for branches of the military that support major wars and political campaigns, an increase from the school library’s total of 100 books pertaining to this subject matter; and software for theater lighting to support the theater arts curriculum.
From the Junior High, we marched through the Cowan Administration building where they thought we were just passing through en route to the next stop, but we surprised two district educators! Angela Kennedy, SFISD Print Shop Specialist, received a Grant for a machine to produce stickers, bumper stickers, flash cards, and award plaques. Angela works closely with the STRIVE program (Students Reaching Independence Through Vocational Education) in the Print Shop as part of their daily routine. Angela shares “receiving a Grants for Great Ideas Grant from the Foundation is a wonderful gift for the Print Shop and for the students who work here! Since we are mostly self-supporting it will enable us to purchase the sticker machine sooner than expected. The students are very excited to add this new product for our customers!” The other grant awarded was to a K-12 adapted physical education teacher who provides accommodations/modifications for students with disabilities in the general education physical education setting. This grant is for “beep baseball” materials for students with visual impairments. The total awarded at Cowan amounted to $5,132.65.
Marching on to Kubacak Elementary, students lined the halls brimming with excitement over the drum line, cheer team, and mascot in anticipation that their teacher would be a lucky recipient. Projects funded here include nonfiction books that are K-3rd grade reading level for the struggling readers in 3rd-5th and for high interest/lower reading level chapter books for readers bridging from picture books to chapter books; ALC K-2 special needs students will receive items to help them with movement to help them organize their minds and bodies to be able to take in information and learn by way of swings, rotation, various chairs, spin board, and texture squares. Shaunce Bradshaw, 4th grade teacher, received two grants totaling $8,551. “STEM with Marty” will help kids get familiar with robotics and electronics and to help learn programming and engineering in a fun and engaging process, and “The Places I Will Go” provides updated software for the VR headsets funded by the Foundation in 2019. Shaunce shares, “I am super excited and thankful that the amazing Santa Fe Education Foundation awarded us $6,000 for “STEM with Marty” and $2,551 for “The Places I Will Go.” If you are looking for a place to donate, donating to the education foundation is a great way to give back to your community. I can’t wait to see all the different ways this technology can be used throughout the grade levels and subjects!” We are fortunate to have great partners like the INEOS ICAN Foundation who generously funded “The Places I Will Go” grant.
Excited students lined the hallways at Wollam Elementary where we paraded to deliver two grants totaling $3,800. These two grants will provide nearly 80 new books for holidays and cultures including sign language, and the early childhood special education class will receive augmentative and alternative communication devices to help generate speech for students who are not able to verbally communicate.
Barnett Elementary was the final stop in our surprise grant parade and the students were cheering loud for us! They received four grants for a total of $7,897.50. Alpha magnetic letters will benefit every student in kinder and 2nd grades to help build words and separate sounds in phonics lessons. 200 books will be added to the campus library to help Pre-K through 2nd grade students for fiction picture/series books and easy series books with familiar characters that can be read independently, along with classics and award-winning titles. 5th grade science students will receive a variety of STEM related activities that include basic electricity kits to build and study circuits, an erosion stream table kit, investigating food webs with owl pellets, fossils, a sun/earth/moon orbital model, sedimentary strata kit, and a contaminants and water cycle kit. K-5 students will receive some new musical instruments to prepare and learn music and enjoy the fulfillment when they play a musical piece together.
“This Grant cycle is the single largest we have done in our 11 years of serving Santa Fe ISD. Working with the Grants Committee is a delight as this process is very robust. We wish we could fund all of the projects, but those that were not funded were offered suggestions or alternative funding ideas. We are so proud that our donors allow this to happen and to say we have given almost $82,000 is very humbling. It will be very exciting to follow up on these funded projects and to see the difference it makes for our students and educators,” said Executive Director Gina Welsh.
2021 marks the 11 year anniversary of the Education Foundation and their mission has always been to fund innovative programs in Santa Fe ISD. The Foundation is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization dependent upon support of businesses and the community to directly support the teachers, staff, and students in Santa Fe ISD through Grants for Great Ideas and other programs.
[About the Santa Fe TX Education Foundation]
[The Santa Fe Texas Education Foundation CULTIVATES and NURTURES the culture of generosity in our community, IGNITES exemplary experiences for every student and teacher, and INSPIRES the achievement of lifelong success. Incorporated in 2010 as a response to the local need for increased community involvement and support for public education, our non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization has reached a milestone of celebrating 11 years of serving Santa Fe ISD. Today, the Foundation supports nearly 700 employees and 4,373 students in Santa Fe ISD. Programs including Grants for Great Ideas, Classroom Wish Lists, End-of-Year Excellence Awards, The Reading Tree Program, Tribe’s Closet, STEM, and Robotics are all supported by the Foundation. To learn more about what we do, visit www.santafetxedfoundation.org. Follow us on Social Media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube @sftxef.]
