Louise Hicks is the executive director for Communities In Schools of Cape Fear. They also serve students in Pender County Schools.
“So we're really looking to improve school culture and create welcoming, individualized learning spaces for the teachers and their students,” she said.
The funding, Hicks said, is supposed to be for things that are not otherwise covered by district funding.
Starting this year, they’re offering up to $750 for each classroom, mostly in CIS' Title One elementary schools. Teachers can put requests to them to buy things like furniture, supplies, and technology.
According to a recent report, North Carolina teachers spend more of their own money on supplies compared to educators in most other states. On average, they spend about $1,632. The national average is $1,021.
But Hicks said the grant is for more than just the teacher-requested materials.
“In addition to the classroom supplies, we've got a pot of funds for each school to help bring in more enrichment activities behind the curriculum and also pay for field trips. So each school will get about $5,000 a year to use towards that, and then also some other funds for Teacher Appreciation,” she said.
Those appreciation events could include providing breakfasts and lunches. Schools with active and well-funded Parent Teacher Associations or Organizations (PTAs, PTOs) typically support things like this — but most of the schools covered by this grant are located in lower-income neighborhoods and don’t have the ability to raise enough money for these kinds of events.
Scott Whisnant, who helped write the CIS grant, is the chair of the group, Elevate Every Child. It’s tasked with supporting some of the lower-performing schools and was born out of the New Hanover County Schools district’s two-year Turn Around Task Force.
Whisnant said his church has already sponsored field trips at Snipes Elementary and said it makes a world of difference.
“We've been able to take them to UNCW to tour that and see what college looks like and open [their] eyes to that. We've been able to take them to the Museum of Science and Art in Raleigh. We've been able to take them to a movie. Most of these kids in these populations haven't ever paid to see a movie in a theater,” he said. “We've taken them to the beach. Some of them have never seen the beach before. Take them to the aquarium, you know, take them to the planetarium down at Sunset Beach. There's a lot of opportunities that these kids right now probably don't realize or even possible for them, but they will be through this grant.”
While the chosen schools this year are Freeman, Snipes, Forest Hills, Wrightsboro, Alderman, Sunset Park, College Park, Winter Park, Mary C. Williams Elementaries, and the International School at Gregory, Hicks said that could be subject to change.
“My conversation with The Endowment is that the schools may shift. We may see this year we didn't get a whole lot of requests. So if the need isn't there, then let's look at the next school that may need that support. So well, this is going to be a learning year for the project,” she said.
Whisnant and Hicks were told that the Endowment staff, like them, want to have the best public school district in the state — and this grant is one way to improve the experience of teachers and staff working in these ten schools, but Whisnant said, “We can't get there if a quarter of our schools are this far behind the rest.”
He’s referring to last year’s school report card grades, where ten of New Hanover County’s schools were designated as low-performing – either receiving a “D” or an “F” and not meeting certain growth expectations.
“Whatever we need to do organization-wise, to get in a position to marshal resources and to advocate to make sure that we can fix that,” he said.
While Whisnant and Hicks are working on the grant to hit Elevate Every Child’s goal of creating a positive culture in every classroom, they also have others. One of their focus points is getting New Hanover County preschool-aged children into high-quality care.
“We need to get them into a pre-K that they can afford, where the teacher is working for a salary they can live on. [It] meets certain quality metrics; it meets a definition of 'kindergarten readiness' that we all understand. [A place] that meets the parents' needs as far as transportation, and as far as being open in the right number of hours,” he said.
The group’s two other goals, besides creating a positive school environment and supporting early childhood education, are the ones that have transferred over from the NHCS Turnaround Task Force. They are, at third grade, all children are reading to learn, and then upon high school graduation, all students are either enrolled in postsecondary education, enlisted in the military, or employed in a job.
