eSchool News » Funding

MIND Research Institute receives $200K for math initiative

eSchool News Staff — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:00:45 +0000

The OneWest Foundation, the philanthropic arm of OneWest Bank, awarded $200,000 to support the education nonprofit MIND Research Institute’s Orange County Math Initiative, a community partnership designed to improve the educational outcomes of students in Orange County, Calif. Launched in 2008 through a collaboration between the Orange County Department of Education, local corporate and foundation partners and MIND Research Institute, the Math Initiative is now helping 63,000 K-12 students at 107 Orange County elementary schools with MIND’s innovative, visual math instructional software. OneWest Foundation’s recent grant will fund the continued work of the Initiative, which is elevating the math achievement of some of the county’s most disadvantaged children.

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Calif. teacher named 2012 National Teacher of the Year

eSchool News Staff — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:00:28 +0000

The Council of Chief State School Officers announced today that Rebecca Mieliwocki, a 7th grade English teacher in California is the 62nd National Teacher of the Year. Mieliwocki is a 7th grade English teacher at Luther Burbank Middle School, which houses 1,100 students in grades 6-8. She has been teaching for 14 years and has spent 9 years in her current position. Rebecca holds a Bachelor of Arts in Speech Communication from California Polytechnic State University and her professional clear credential in Secondary English Education from California State University Northridge. She is the 2005 California League of Middle Schools Educator of the Year for Southern California, a 2009 PTA Honorary Service Award Winner, and a BTSA mentor, and has also served as a teacher expert for CSUN College of Education Panel titled “The ABC’s of IEPs.”

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Libraries receive $30,000, travel scholarships

eSchool News Staff — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:00:12 +0000

Better World Books and the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) today announced that library programs in Columbus, Ohio; Providence, R.I., and Salinas, Calif., have won the annual Better World Books/NCFL Libraries and Families Award. Each library program will receive a $10,000 award. “These libraries provide a critical service for our communities and are passionate about the families they serve,” said John Ujda, vice president of marketing for Better World Books. “The grants will fund innovative programs that enable them to implement big ideas to promote family learning and help libraries spread the word about the important impact they have on families and communities.” Funding for the program comes from the Better World Books for Libraries program, a free service that helps libraries manage their unwanted books. Better World Books sells those books online, sharing the revenues with the libraries and its nonprofit literacy partners. In addition to the $10,000 grant, award recipients received scholarships to attend the National Conference on Family Literacy.

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School lunch debt: Districts taking to collection agencies, meal swap-outs to stave off unpaid bills

staff and wire services reports — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:48:44 +0000

Americans are likely hearing from debt collectors more in recent years than in the past, but a practice that may become even more common: debt collecting for unpaid school lunches, the Huffington Post reports. A lot of school-aged kids are getting free lunches — not because they are backed by the government’s free and reduced-lunch program, but because parents haven’t been paying off lunch bills, forcing a number of districts to foot the cost. Already weighed down by budget cuts across education systems, districts can’t afford to take on yet another addition to climbing costs. As a result, several across the country have resorted to hiring debt collectors, employing constables and switching out regular meals for lesser versions in a push to get parents to pay up. As of last February, New York City schools had absorbed some $42 million in unpaid lunch fees since 2004, according to The New York Times. Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools in North Carolina recently appropriated $40,000 to cover unpaid lunch fees, the Daily Tar Heel reports…

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More than $5K for science, meteorology teachers

eSchool News Staff — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:04:35 +0000

These grants are awarded annually to teachers/educators of grades K-12 to help improve the education of their students, school and/or community in the science of meteorology.

Up to $150K for healthy communities

eSchool News Staff — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:02:12 +0000

This prize recognizes and honors the efforts and accomplishments of U.S. communities working at the forefront of population health improvement.

Software, prizes for pirate animations

eSchool News Staff — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:00:10 +0000

Students can download a free 30-day use of Stop Motion Pro software to film their own pirate-themed animations for a chance to win the grand prize, a trip for two to a North American Animation Festival, the same software used to film The Pirates: Stop Motion Pro Studio HD, a Microsoft HD webcam, professional armature, clay, animation book, and more.

Wealthy parents increasingly seeking financial aid for K-12 education

staff and wire services reports — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:51:37 +0000

Move over college students–you’re not the only ones seeking financial aid to pay for tuition. More parents are applying for loans and other help to pay their kid’sprivate elementary and high school tuition, reports CNN Money. And it’s not just the poorest families looking for help. The number of families earning more than $150,000 that requested financial assistance for the 2010-2011 school year increased 6 percent since the 2002-2003, according to CNN Money, which reports that 20 percent of families seeking financial aid to pay for K-12 education are in that income bracket. The average cost of a year of private school is $21,995, a figure that’s ballooned 35 percent since the 2001-02 school year when adjusted for inflation, according to the New York Times…

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California schools warn of grim future for students

staff and wire services reports — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:48:40 +0000

California’s public schools released a report that shows an increase in stress levels even as they must reduce staff levels, Yahoo! News reports. The state’s university system, too, revealed that continued funding cuts are damaging the Golden State’s ability to provide an affordable higher education to its students.

What stresses does the public school system face? The Oakland Tribune cited an increase of children living in poverty. Cases in point are children attending the Oakland school district. Between 2007 and 2010, the percentage of children living below the federal poverty level increased by 8 percent, reaching 33 percent. This figure points to stress factors the schools face when working with youngsters to succeed academically, which include the local unemployment rate and budget cuts due to the state’s deficit. “They try to teach an increasing number of children in poverty with fewer employees and a continual threat of cutbacks,” the report notes…

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After 15 years, govt. tells phone companies to follow low-price rule for schools

Contributor — Tue, 08 May 2012 19:15:00 +0000

The FCC says it will teach companies about the preferential pricing rule.

After 15 years of neglect, federal regulators are finally planning to tell phone companies selling services to schools and libraries how to comply with a rule requiring them to charge bargain prices.

Last week, ProPublica revealed that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had failed to provide guidance for the low pricing rule case since the 1997 launch of the school program, called eRate. Lawsuits and other legal actions in four states turned up evidence that AT&T and Verizon charged local school districts much higher rates than it gave to similar customers or more than what the program allowed.

The preferential pricing rule, called lowest corresponding price, was designed to give schools a leg up in the complicated world of voice and data pricing, and to make sure school children had access to the Internet. But despite evidence of inflated pricing, the FCC never brought an enforcement case against a service provider for violating the rule.

While the main victims of this failure are the nation’s schoolchildren who receive suboptimal broadband access, there’s another set of victims: the vast majority of people with a cellular or landline phone contract. That’s because the program provides a subsidy to schools to help them pay for the telecom services. Telephone consumers pay for this subsidy, usually through a “Universal Service Fund” charge on individual phone bills. The subsidy fund is capped at about $2.25 billion a year.