| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Akins Early College High School | Akins Rock Climbing Club | This project provides and maintains a welcoming, inclusive club environment that allows anyone to join and have the opportunity to participate in a school organization, find a safe community, and develop their rock climbing skills. This project will allow students to become club members, find new friends, interact with collegiate rock climbers, and develop their rock climbing skills at no financial cost to students. | $3,000 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Andrews Elementary School | Dyslexia Challenge | This project will support bilingual children in overcoming the difficulties and become readers. Not all children naturally learn how to read, despite their intelligence. Dyslexia is a frustrating and persistent challenge for some students, and we have the tools to help them, even when they are learning different languages. | $7,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Creative Learning Initiative | Creative Community Literacy Collaboration for Reading Academies | This project helps uplift educators and sustain engagement as they move through intensive, state-mandated professional learning throughout the school year. We will increase students’ and teachers’ exposure to professional writers and innovative curricular/instructional resources through learner-centered partnerships with Austin Bat Cave; and build personal and community literacy connections, key components of AISD’s literacy framework. This project puts literacy learning into action and intentionally carves out space for creative placemaking. | $5,700 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Dyslexia | Unmasking Dyslexia: Breaking Barriers | This project provides family engagement opportunities to increase awareness surrounding dyslexia throughout Dyslexia Awareness Month in October. Students identified with dyslexia, as well as their families, are often overwhelmed and need guidance in navigating resources and services related to dyslexia. Through workshops and interactive sessions, students, educators, and families gain invaluable tools to navigate the learning journey with confidence and ensure students with dyslexia reach their full potential academically and socially. | $5,700 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Multilingual | Tamil-Telugu Program | This project will help develop inclusivity and pride through a stronger focus on diversity and culture. This is an opportunity for a majority West Austin campus to provide language support to a newcomer population. We will enhance the primary language of Tamil and Telugu speaking students in South Austin. Research on bilingualism suggests that the more skilled the individual is in the first language, the faster he/she will learn a second language. Parents want their children to be bilingual and research shows that being bilingual affects the brain in many ways. | $5,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Office of Organizational Transformation | Campus Equity Advocate Teams (CEATs) | This project was established due to staff, students and community identifying in the Long Range Plan and the Equity Action Plan that campus leadership, teachers and staff lack the skills needed to appropriately address racism, anti-blackness, and identity-based discriminatory incidents. Campuses will build a core team of 3-5 instructional staff including 1 administrator who attend monthly learning experiences from September-May to build their capacity to address discriminatory incidents and improve campus culture, by fostering campus-wide community building, strengthening cultural proficiency and inclusiveness, and utilizing relevant tools to address equity concerns. | $8,500 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Special Education | Your Future is Bright: College and Career Readiness for Students Receiving Special Education Services | This project will allow the Special Education Transition Team the opportunity to partner with community agencies to provide meaningful district-wide trainings in the areas of employment & vocational training, college readiness, and transition planning for life after high school. All AISD students accessing special education services, parents & guardians, as well as AISD staff, are invited to attend these transition events. | $10,000 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Student Support Services | Nurturing Connection and Belonging with Restorative Practices | This project will establish and maintain bi-monthly restorative practices opportunities to model and engage in relationship-building activities with adults that can be implemented with students. The project will focus on nurturing connection and belonging within the educator experience. | $8,800 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin State Hospital | Austin State Hospital Day School Literacy and Trauma Informed Care Upgrade Initiative | This project will improve the outdated literacy and learning library at our specialized campus, and provide additional tools and resources to the teachers to strengthen their knowledge and skills in providing a trauma-informed school experience for the students served at our specialized campus. | $4,500 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Barrington Elementary School | College Field Trip to Our Lady of the Lake University | This project offers my 5th grade students a college life experience so that they can be motivated to pursue a degree of their choice. Most of our students come from a low socio-economic background and lack the financial resources to continue their education after graduating from high school. I believe that a college life experience will be a great factor that will determine whether our students will attend a college and a university and pursue a higher education. | $5,000 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Barrington Elementary School | Literacy Incentive Project | This project will help students increase their fluency rate. Students will receive an incentive every two weeks when they increase their fluency rate by 10 words. Teachers will receive a classroom set of books with a variety of reading levels. | $10,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Bear Creek Elementary School | If the Book Fits, They'll Read it - Building a Decodable Books Literacy Library | This project will give our students the gift of decodable books and instructional support materials designed for students with dyslexia or other reading disabilities. When students feel successful at reading they are motivated to read and their progress is accelerated. Decodable books provide opportunities for students who have reading challenges to experience success and build greater self-confidence. | $7,500 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Bedichek Middle School | Classroom Literacy | This project will augment our sixth grade classroom library with high-interest, culturally relevant novels to read during their STIR (Structured Independent Reading) time and Scholastic Scope magazine high-interest, timely nonfiction and fiction texts to supplement classroom instruction. Fifteen minutes of daily independent reading significantly increases student reading performance at all levels and serves to build habitual readers with conscious reading identities. When students are able to choose from a wide range of appealing, interesting reading choices, they are more likely to develop strong reading habits. | $2,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Blackshear Elementary School | Let's (Blackshear) Buzz Together | This project will foster team building and a sense of belonging among our teachers and staff. With Panorama Climate Survey results indicating that only 45% of educators feel a sense of belonging, this initiative will provide both on and off-Campus events and activities to increase camaraderie and support of one another at our school. Together, with our Parent Teacher Association’s (PTA) contributions, the project will provide team-building and staff wellness activities, monthly appreciation activities, Teacher’s Lounge enhancements and a new “get to know you program” called “Morning Buzz with a Colleague.” | $7,500 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Blackshear Elementary School | Let's Get That Literacy (Blackshear) Buzz! | This project seeks to ignite literacy for our students and families, while providing our teachers with more resources and tools. For our early learners (PreK through second grade), we will offer Family Book Clubs, where parents and caregivers will receive children's books and tips on reading with and engaging their student(s) at home. Our second and third graders will have the opportunity to choose creative writing as one of their fine arts classes. All of our third, fourth and fifth graders will participate and compete in a new program called the Literacy Buzz Bowl, a trivia-based reading contest. In addition, our teachers will receive funds to grow their classroom libraries. | $9,800 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Blazier Elementary School | Blazier Student Leadership News | This project supports the creation and enhancement of a student news broadcast program at our elementary school. This initiative aims to empower our students with valuable skills in communication, collaboration, media literacy, technology applications and Digital Citizenship. By producing their own news broadcasts, students will develop confidence, creativity, problem-solving and critical thinking abilities essential for their future success. In addition, this project will establish a deeper connection between students, staff, community and families, while also maintaining vertical alignment between Primary and Intermediate grade levels in both English and Spanish. | $3,200 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Blazier Elementary School | Empowering Voices: Diverse Stories Through Student-Created Books | This project aims to enhance our school library's collection by implementing the Student Treasures Publishing program. This initiative will empower students to write and publish their own class books, individual stories, and family books, fostering creativity and literacy skills among participants. By engaging in the process of writing, editing, and designing their books, students will develop critical thinking, collaboration, and communication skills. Each book will showcase a variety of perspectives, reflecting the cultural diversity and unique experiences of our student body. These publications will enrich our school library's offerings and promote inclusivity and celebrate the voices of our students within the broader community. Students will gain confidence in their abilities as authors and contributors to our school's educational environment, creating lasting impacts on their academic journey and personal growth. | $2,500 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Burnet Middle School | Setting the Stage for Dreams to Become Reality | This project is designed to increase college awareness and readiness skills school-wide. It will incorporate a school-family-community partnership to support and empower families as students progress through middle school, high school and into college and careers. Students will participate in workshops, presentations, and field trips that prepare them for college and a career following their post-secondary education. | $10,000 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Burnet Middle School | Small Group Cohort Program | This project supports integration of small group learning at the secondary level. We have created and facilitated the first ever Small Group Cohort Program to assist with student growth and achievement that is scaffolded to meet teacher's needs and strengths. In this cohort, teachers will learn all elements of running a small group and stations at the secondary level, as well as plan for and organize an environment that encourages small group and student collaboration. This grant will assist two cohorts of teachers with purchasing resources and equipment to better support a small group environment for all students in core content areas. | $10,000 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Casey Elementary School | Harmony in Teaching: Cultivating Wellness and Joy | This project aims to enhance the educator experience by implementing a comprehensive wellness program at an elementary school. Through activities promoting mental and physical health, fostering team building initiatives, and infusing joy into daily routines, the project seeks to create a supportive and uplifting workplace environment conducive to both personal well-being and professional growth. | $7,500 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Casey Elementary School | The Crocodile News Team | This project will help hour school produce a newscast composed of a variety of programming such as filmed news reports based on real news articles, student created book reviews (similar to Reading Rainbow), student created fictional productions in the form of short films, student created surveys which will be administered to the whole school, school wide writing competitions. Through the interdisciplinary project, students will develop reading, writing, and speaking skills. These videos, which will be aired bi-monthly during school assemblies and posted on our school website. | $8,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Cook Elementary School | Healthy Heart and Mind Initiative | This project will aim to have our students and families learn about healthy foods and discover how fitness can improve our mental health. A portion of the grant funds will be used to purchase ingredients for the cooking class opportunities every month. | $2,500 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Cook Elementary School | Literature Comes Alive | This project is meant to bring literacy alive through the arts to provide students a deeper, stronger connection with an author's message. Students will explore responses to literature through self-selected expressions of art. Implementation for this project would consist of scheduling guest speakers and artists who will expose students to experiences in various genres and offer creative ways to respond to literature. In addition, an After-School Literature Comes Alive program will also offer ways to express literature through theater. These theater productions will be performed during the Literacy Comes Alive Book Evenings to be shared with our community stakeholders. | $5,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Covington Middle School | Artful Gardens: Cultivating Creativity and Sustainability with Aeroponic Towers | This project focuses on innovative aeroponic gardening with an emphasis on water conservation. It provides Life Skills students with a hands-on school and community-based farming project, fostering self-sustainability by nurturing and growing their own food. Additionally, the project will benefit all students by integrating cross-curricular lessons in science, health, and environmental education, enriching their understanding of sustainable practices. Upon harvesting, the produce will be sold to the community at discounted prices, offering natural organic foods. The profits will be reinvested in the project, ensuring its sustainability for years to come. | $10,000 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Covington Middle School | Colts Care | This project will enhance the educator experience at our school by building strong foundational relationships, and engaging in whole school culturally responsive restorative practices in order to create a more supportive inclusive environment. We will do this through regular check-ins, circles, professional learning, and integrating wellness practices and wellness spaces on the campus. Our goal is to cultivate a school culture of support, inclusivity, appreciation, collaboration, belonging, with support networks and effective communication. | $10,000 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Crockett Early College High School | Crockett College Readiness Aid | This project will reduce the financial barriers associated with earning college credit through AP Exams, by decreasing the costs that students and families must bear, we aim to increase participation in AP courses. This initiative will enable more students to benefit from college-level coursework and earn valuable college credits while still in high school. By alleviating this significant financial burden, we strive to empower more students in our community, particularly those who have been historically underserved and first-generation college students, to become college-ready. This will open up greater opportunities for higher education and long-term success, helping to break the cycle of limited access to higher education in underserved communities. | $10,000 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Crockett Early College High School | Supporting Novice Teachers Through Collective Coaching | This project enhances educator experience through a collective coaching model designed for novice teachers. It integrates diverse learning experiences such as book studies, learning walks, extended planning times, and Lunch & Learns within the school day. By providing teachers with resources to implement new strategies, we aim to cultivate interactive, engaging, and rigorous classroom environments where all students succeed. This approach not only improves teaching effectiveness but also supports educator retention and job satisfaction, fostering continuous professional growth. | $9,600 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Dobie Middle School | Student Incentives: Saturday Bootcamp Tutorials | This project provides students with information about college and career opportunities and builds a community of learners that includes their families. We will also improve Literacy Instruction by incentivizing attendance at Saturday Bootcamp Tutorials. In addition to instructional time, students will have the opportunity to interact with representatives from various careers and hear from guest speakers about different college opportunities, including grants and scholarships. | $2,500 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Dobie Middle School | SXNE - Campus Conferences Where Vision Takes Action | This project helps our East Austin schools reclaim our legacy by honoring the expertise of teachers within our campus. SXNE is a series of campus level conferences which gives our staff the opportunity to bring an aspect of the campus' vision statement to life through presentations, partnerships, and celebration. | $10,000 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Govalle Elementary School | College and Career Exploration | This project provides students and families the opportunity to learn about various colleges and careers in the greater Austin area. | $2,500 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Harris Elementary School | Reading with Families | This project will inspire students and their families to read together by building a reading library of exciting, (contemporary, Latinx) children’s literature which will be celebrated and school-wide read in Literacy and STEAM nights and enjoyed on a daily basis through research-based reading instruction and activities. We know families are children’s first teachers and reading is fundamental for academic success so let's get some amazing books in children’s hands and create the space and time for families to read with their children in the classroom and at home. | $2,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Houston Elementary School | LiveSchool: Revitalizing Campus Joy | This project will support LiveSchool implementation across the campus to improve student participation and behavior, which we hope to see directly impact academic success. This school-wide incentive program perpetuates joy among our students, staff, and families. It is an incredible opportunity to increase our parent communication and track both positive and negative behaviors. The house point system encourages healthy competition between grade levels, while individual points can be exchanged for rewards from our school store. | $3,500 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | International High School | International High School's Empowerment Academy | This project provides access to information about college and career opportunities in high school and beyond to qualifying students and their families, and supports opportunities for goal setting and future planning. The project also builds leadership capacity and self-advocacy skills with activities that empower students and families through self-identity, and reflection activities that honor their trajectory toward bilingualism. | $10,000 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Jordan Elementary School | Using Classroom Libraries to Develop A Robust Independent Reading Culture | This project will address issues of accessibility, engagement, and diversity in literature as we work to create a robust independent reading culture in our 4th grade classrooms. Using Classroom Libraries to Develop A Robust Independent Reading Culture brings a diverse, professionally-curated collection of books to our 4th grade ESL and DL classrooms to inspire, teach, and grow our students’ love of reading. We believe that access to “just right” books allows students to find and enjoy books that match their interests, abilities, and experiences, making them more likely to succeed in school and to become life-long readers. | $4,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Kocurek Elementary School | Bridging Gaps and Building Literacy | This project will create an inclusive, enriching, and interactive library environment where resources, literature, and programs reflect the diversity and backgrounds of the student population. The library will become an engaging and vibrant space where students and their families can connect, read, learn, and grow. | $9,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | LBJ Early College High School | Rebuilding an ECHS Program | This project will increase student enrollment in our Early College High School program, leading to more students completing their associates degree from Austin Community College. We want to build student investment by paying for field trips to ACC and other local college campuses, pay for an incentives program for students who meet certain milestones, develop a staff cohort focused on improving CCR across grade levels, and pay to train staff/ invite trainers on critical skills for math and reading to improve TSIA2 passing rates. | $9,800 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Linder Elementary School | Leaving the Nest for STEAM | This project will expose our 4th grade classes to an educational opportunity outside fo their city to NASA Space Center that could tremendously motivate them to explore future careers and pathways in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM). | $3,000 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Linder Elementary School | Linder Garden Beautification Project | This project will make the Linder garden a space for reflection, calm, beauty, tranquility, and a place for our students, staff and community to go for mindfulness and peace. We need a space where we can decompress and observe the beauty of nature, and in turn experience peace and calm. | $5,000 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Lively Middle School | Anthropology Explorers: Cultures of the World Project | The project will immerse middle school students in cultural anthropology through engaging activities that foster cultural awareness, empathy, critical thinking, and cross-cultural communication skills. By partnering with UT Austin's Anthropology Department, facilitating virtual exchanges with peers globally, and hosting interactions with Peace Corps Volunteers, the project aims to provide students with firsthand insights into diverse cultures and global perspectives. The project's overarching objective is to inspire a lifelong interest in anthropology and cultivate a more inclusive worldview among young learners, while preparing students for college and career readiness in a globalized world! | $2,500 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Lively Middle School | Empowering Tomorrow's Leaders through Model UN | This project will support the Lively Model UN --- a community of students who share a common interest in diplomacy, international affairs, and the art of debate. We will prepare students to be college and career ready by giving them the opportunity to have engaging discussions on global issues, diplomatic strategies, and international relations. They will develop public speaking and research skills through in-class simulations and participation in Model UN conferences in high schools and universities in the Central Texas area. | $2,500 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Marshall Middle School | Diverse Learner Representation in Literature | This project will help our students feel represented in literature - and that includes our diverse learners. I would like to buy books for our classroom libraries that feature and celebrate students with dyslexia, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, speech delays, and other neurodiversities. I would also like to start a resource library with books for families and teachers so that we can all be better informed about the experiences of our students and how to best support them. | $1,500 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Mills Elementary School | Where Hands-On Math Builds Mastery! | This project incorporates tactile learning experiences and interactive activities to engage students with math intervention activities. Through hands-on, personalized interventions, we are aiming to unlock each student's mathematical potential, fostering growth and confidence in their numerical abilities to ensure that all students master the TEKS. | $7,500 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Navarro Early College High School | Equity within Educators | This project aims to provide a sense of belonging and community for Black staff and students through academics, community, and cultural awareness. The project includes initiatives that focus on cultural awareness, Heritage celebrations, and staff/student recognition. Through these actions, we hope to reinforce our staff’s intrinsic motivation and engagement which, in turn, better serves our students. | $7,500 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Navarro Early College High School | Reading to Achieve Scholastic Excellence (RISE) | This project will expand the reading levels and performances of African American high school students. The aim of this project is to have African American youth learn more about contributions of figures in the past and instill more cultural awareness among the group. The long-term goal is to conduct reading workshops more culturally aligned, specifically those in high school grades. These high school activities will also include visits to public libraries, field trips to museums, visits to monuments and use of guest speakers to support the literacy workshops. Much evidence has pointed to the benefits of imagination to provide confidence and foundations for most individuals to visualize themselves in many circumstances beyond immediate surroundings. | $10,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Navarro Early College High School & Akins Early College High School | Leadership & Teamwork Make the Dream Work! | This project will support two campuses maintain and sustain their “grow your own” teaching/ training and counseling/human service programs. We aim to strengthen the College and Career Readiness skills of our students by providing experiential learning opportunities throughout the school year. | $6,200 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Oak Hill Elementary School | Outdoor Learning and Career Exploration | This project will help us grow our campus gardens and integration of PEAS program to include more grades using an outdoor learning space. We want to our students to explore STEAM career opportunities related to nature, sustainability, planning public garden spaces, and community organization. Research supports the benefits of outdoor learning to increase academic engagement, performance, critical thinking skills, and social emotional learning skills. In turn these benefits support our student’s future experiences in the workplace and community while investigating careers. | $10,000 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Ortega Elementary School | Building Community | This project will encompass a multitude of activities that will help build community through literacy programs which will help improve reading and writing skills, boost student self-confidence, and provide Social Emotional Learning support to our entire campus. We'll parter with community literacy organizations to work alongside classroom teachers to teach creative writing classes and purchase books for our campus library to support readers of all levels and books in multiple foreign languages that will support the many languages our students and families speak. | $10,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Overton Elementary School | Elevating Our Conversations | This project aims to build a community of educators that communicates, advocate for all students, and strive to create equitable opportunities. We will participate in professional learning at the Blanton Museum and ongoing conversations about inclusive language, impact over intent, and relationships. | $1,100 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Palm Elementary School | Community Garden | This project aims to transform an unused area on our campus into a vibrant community garden. Through this initiative, we seek to provide students, families, staff, and community members with hands-on learning opportunities in gardening, sustainability, and healthy eating. This project aligns with our commitment to fostering environmental stewardship and community engagement. | $5,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Palm Elementary School | Reading Pleasure for Special Education Resource Room | This project will enhance literacy development and overall learning outcomes for special education students. Classroom libraries are essential for special education students as they provide access to tailored and multisensory materials, encourage reading practice, support language and vocabulary development, promote independence and confidence, offer social and emotional benefits, and reinforce therapeutic goals. | $1,200 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Patton Elementary School | Happy Teachers, Thriving Students! | This project aims to support teachers through community-building activities and by providing monetary and instructional resources to create 42 sensory and behavior-friendly classrooms, including all general education, special education, and essential area classrooms. Special education teachers will pilot items and practices for students with behavioral needs and recommend them to general education teachers. Weekly Zumba classes will foster staff connections and enhance the sense of community. | $9,700 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Perez Elementary School | Telling Our Stories: Empowering Multilingual Writers Through Arpillera Art | The project empowers our 3rd and 4th grade classroom students to find and share their voices through the art of arpillera, a traditional textile art form with deep historical roots. By engaging in this creative writing process, students will not only express their personal stories but also connect with and understand the significant historical contexts linked to literacy and resistance. This initiative aims to foster a sense of identity and cultural awareness while enhancing storytelling and critical thinking skills. | $5,900 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Pickle Elementary School | Campamento Aguilas, Academia Cuauhtli | This project will provide mentoring and professional development for teachers on how to support low-income Latinx students in the classroom and then teachers provide thematic units for students that focus on critical thinking and oral language development. This grant will provide academic materials and targeted incentives within an award-winning curated community that has been developing teacher agency and leadership in Austin ISD for the last 10 years. Teachers will write three biliterate culturally revitalizing curricular units and then collaboratively teach this curriculum to 60 3rd - 5th graders. Through this program, students learn critical visual literacy skills with an emphasis on developing oral and academic language in Spanish and in English. | $8,500 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Pickle Elementary School | Equity and Opportunity in Gifted and Talented | This project will increase the percentage of students identified as Gifted & Talented (GT) with a focus in math on a Title I campus and to meet the academic needs of GT students identified in math through enrichment opportunities. We will also engage parents about the GT program and explain the identification process. Teachers will be engaged through professional learning about strategies that can be used to increase the likelihood of identification in any of the four content areas. | $10,000 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Sanchez Elementary School | Space! | This project will provide a 6th grade graduate trip to NASA Space Center in Houston, TX as part of the Career Awareness component of our Campus Improvement Plan. Our school is committed to promoting an atmosphere of career awareness among our students to have them consider the options for their future at an early age. | $7,500 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Small Middle School | Book Nook Vending Machine | This project aims to help immerse students in a world of reading, tailored to their unique interests and preferences. Using a cool new way for students to dive into books: a special vending machine just for books! Just like our students love to get snacks from a vending machine, this one features books! Students get to pick out books that match their interests and keep them for free. Teachers and staff can give out tokens as rewards for a variety of achievements. | $10,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | St. Elmo Elementary School | Brain Wave | This project helps students unlock their potential, identify their strengths, and transform their community via the creation of student-led, school-based wellness activities. The Brain Wave Program supports College and Career Readiness skills such as teamwork, communication, emotional regulation, goal-setting, and problem-solving, which are critical to future success. Brain Wave includes 24/7 digital support resources for students and their families, a technology upgrade, a renovated counseling center with sensory support and brain regulation lab, and funds for students to create their own school-based wellness events aligned with their college and career interests. | $10,000 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Sunset Valley Elementary School | Los Guepardos Aprenden a Leer | This project will provide our learners with kinesthetic evidence-based instructional practice. We want our Guepardos to acquire skills that help them to develop their biliteracy. This project will give our Guepardos an additional support in order to learn how to read. | $9,400 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Travis Early College High School | Celebrating the Culture of BiLiteracy across Generations | This project will enhance literacy by conducting a schoolwide literacy campaign through activities designed to engage students and parents in reading, digital literacy, bilingual literacy in order to improve student academic performance and engage parents in adult education and job training opportunities. | $10,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Travis Early College High School | Happy Teacher Revolution | This project will support teacher self care and wellness. The Happy Teacher Revolution (HTR) is a system of school based support groups for teachers that empowers educators to claim their own physical and mental wellness. We will establish a HTR support group on our campus and train additional teachers to facilitate HTR support groups on other campuses within our vertical team. The project will stock the already established ‘Teacher Chill’ space where our support group will meet. | $6,000 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Walnut Creek Elementary School | Shoot For The Stars! | This project will organize an inspiring field trip to NASA for 5th graders. This unique educational experience will immerse students in the world of space exploration through interactive exhibits, hands-on activities, and presentations by NASA scientists, igniting their interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The aim is to provide these students with an unforgettable learning opportunity that broadens their horizons and encourages a passion and interest for STEM fields. | $10,000 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Walnut Creek Elementary School | The Heart of the Classroom: Building Classroom Libraries Kids Will Love | This project will build high-quality classroom libraries that lead our students to love reading and to read both widely and voluminously. The classroom library is the heart of each classroom; the quality of the classroom library depends on a diverse, high-interest collection of books that inspires, engages, and challenges readers. Each classroom will receive an infusion of approximately 150 new grade-level appropriate and language-specific books; each staff member will receive, read, and discuss a copy of a current well-reviewed professional text that highlights the philosophical, pedagogical, and practical components of building a high-quality classroom library. | $10,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Widen Elementary School | Dream Big Wildcats: Empowering Futures Beyond High School | This project will empower students by providing them with early exposure to a variety of careers beyond the classroom, emphasizing the importance of broadening their horizons and envisioning diverse possibilities for their futures. Starting at elementary, we hope to provide opportunities for engaging in interactive and inspiring activities. This project will help young learners explore potential career paths and develop the foundational skills needed for future success. This initiative strives to bridge the opportunity gap, fostering ambition and confidence in every student. | $6,900 | College and Career Readiness |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Winn Montessori School | Staff Development | This project will enhance the professional growth and effectiveness of our Montessori guides by providing opportunities for them to visit other public Montessori schools in Texas and attend state and national Montessori conferences. Through these experiences, our guides will gain valuable insights, exchange best practices, and network with fellow educators, ultimately benefiting our students and school community. | $10,000 | Educator Experience |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Zilker Elementary School | Novel Engineering Project | This project will ignite student curiosity while exploring the book: From the Mixed Up Files of Ms. Basil E. Frankweiler. We will connect our annual One Book, One School event with our STEAM Lab. We will create a partnership with our school’s PTA, The Thinkery, and campus staff to supercharge our literacy teaching practices. Through professional development and mentorship provided by The Thinkery, our teachers will learn how to implement innovative Novel Engineering practices to build students’ problem solving skills while diving into cross content learning connecting literature, science, and art. It's a recipe for success that will transform our school into a vibrant hub of creativity and discovery. | $5,000 | Literacy |
| 2024 Inspire the Future Grant | Zilker Elementary School | The Butterfly Effect: Fostering Staff Connections | This project will promote the employee experience by highlighting the significance of small actions within our school community, inspired by The Butterfly Effect. Through team-building activities and recognition programs, we aim to cultivate a culture where every staff member feels seen, appreciated, and empowered to make a difference, ultimately enhancing the learning environment for all. | $6,500 | Educator Experience |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Akins Early College High School | From Akins to the World | From Austin to the World is designed to fund opportunities abroad that provide scholars with authentic opportunities to examine global challenges and transform into 21st century global citizens. | $10,000 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Allison Elementary School | Dragons - Opportunity | Project involves 5th grade end of year trip to NASA Space Center in Houston, TX as part of their STEAM, Robotics & AVID culmination trip. Students have participated in STEAM Labs throughout the year and will be going to Martin Middle School and Eastside Memorial Vertical Team that provides Innovation Academies that Support STEAM and AVID initiatives. Allison is committed to support these initiatives and promote student engagement in the Sciences for future career options . | $4,000 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Andrews Elementary School | New Teacher Support | We are so excited to welcome 9 new teachers to our campus this year, 6 will be brand new to education and 3 will be in their second year. New teachers need many kinds of support: emotional, instructional and tangible. The funds from this project will help our new teachers purchase supplies for their new classrooms, set up classroom management incentive programs based on PBIS and SEL, and stock their classroom libraries with multicultural, interest driven books. | $7,200 | Staff Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Dyslexia/504 | Elevate training and credentials for bilingual dyslexia interventionists | The Austin Ed Fund grant would provide an opportunity to provide enhanced training to bilingual dyslexia interventionists who serve emergent bilingual students in Spanish resulting in appropriate advanced credentialing related to dyslexia: The Certified Academic Language Practitioner. Participants would attend training, complete advanced studies of dyslexia and related disorders, and receive supervision of lesson fidelity and delivery through one school year. Successful completion of the program would allow participants to take the ALTA CALP exam leading to advanced certification. | $10,000 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Equity | Campus Equity Advocates Teams | The Campus Equity Advocate Team (CEAT) will support their campus peers on addressing equity challenges such as discriminatory incidents, microaggressions and exclusionary acts with regard to gender identity, religion, ethnicity and other human differences that affect student and staff belonging, well-being, and success. The Campus Equity Advocate Team will also focus on building a stronger school culture to expand support for and with students by building campus community, an equitable lens for staff and students, providing support when discriminatory incidents occur, and facilitating professional learning opportunities to the campus. | $10,000 | Staff Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Food Services | Food of the Future | The Food for the Future grant project is a collaboration between Career and Technical Education (CTE) culinary students, AISD Food Service, local chefs, and SXSW's Future of Food event. Students will work with chef mentors from the Austin community to create recipes using revolutionary, sustainable ingredients. This grant offers an opportunity for AISD's future chef's to create innovative recipes with foods of the future for an international audience. | $3,000 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Multilingual Department | Sewing Friendships: A Sewing + ESL Program for Afghan Mothers of AISD students | This grant will support a biweekly sewing group for mothers of Afghan refugee students in AISD. Community building and ESL activities will be built-in to group meetings to facilitate conversation, shared experience and friendship building. Through this program, we hope to help build stronger community bonds throughout the AISD refugee population by providing a safe and empowering space for women to work together as well as introduce new, exciting cross cultural experiences to the broader AISD/Austin community. | $6,000 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Project HELP | Clothing Program for Secondary Project Help students | Students experiencing homelessness face many barriers to attending school. Project Help seeks to establish a clothing program for secondary students experiencing homelessness to help remove one significant barrier: lack of access to appropriate clothing. $10,000 would allow Project Help to provide clothing vouchers valued at $130 to 77 students, which we would then supplement with additional clothing items donated through community partners. | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Project HELP | Hygiene Product Program for Project Help students | Students experiencing homelessness face many barriers to attending school. Project Help seeks to establish a hygiene product program for students experiencing homelessness to help remove one significant barrier: lack of access to hygiene products. $10,000 would allow Project Help to maintain a closet of hygiene kits valued at $12 a piece to 833 students, which we would then supplement with additional items donated through community partners. | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Special Education | Just Like Me - Obtaining Library Books that Represent Students with Disabilities | The Special Education Department, in collaboration with our Library Media Center, is seeking to foster inclusion and encourage representation of students with disabilities by obtaining books for all Austin ISD libraries that highlight characters with disabilities, and their contributions to our world! | $7,715 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Special Education | Improving Access, Inclusion, and Vocational Skill Building with 3D Printing | This project involves using 3D printing technology to produce keyguards for our AAC users who have difficulty with fine motor and visual skills which impede their ability to access their communication devices, thereby improving their ability to communicate, access, and participate in their education. This technology would also allow us to create various other adapted materials to support our special education students with physical limitations to enable them to more fully participate in their class and school activities. Part of this project entails partnering with a Title I high school CTE class to help create some of these materials, with the goal of helping build student interest and skills in both engineering/STEM and special education/inclusion. | $10,000 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD STEM | Coming to Our Senses on the Path of Least Resistance' | This project will create an outdoor Mindfulness Sensory Path to help students integrate sensory experiences, calm and/or stimulate their nervous systems in healthy, therapeutic ways, and enable them to find the mental and physical balance to perform better in academic and social settings. The path will incorporate a variety of natural textured surfaces such as smooth pebbles, wood grain, grass, bark, clay, limestone, sand, and granite surrounded by drought-tolerant native plants, including Gregg's mistflower, frogfruit, bamboo muhly, inland sea oats, and fountain grass. This area would benefit everyone who visited, but it would be especially therapeutic for students with nervous system dysregulation. The installation would incorporate a Mindfulness Sensory Path with educational signage encouraging the user to stop and feel plant textures or notice colors, smells, and sounds, essentially building awareness of their internal and external states of being. Grant funds would also cover ecotherapy trainings and community outreach. | $9,590 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Student Enrollment | What Can AISD Students Do For You? | AISD students have got talent and we need to spread the word! With the goal to increase program enrollment, reduce drop-out rates and increase attendance: four AISD schools will work to create a sustainable student-involved business model for our CTE and Fine Arts programs and start an advertising campaign to promote the skills and services that our Austin ISD students can offer. | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Austin ISD Student Support Services | Self-identified Native American Student Cultural Enrichment | Provide self-identified Native American and Alaskan Native students cultural enrichment with a partnership with Great Promise for American Indians. | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Barrington Elementary School | Cool-Down Room | We would like to set up a classroom with SEL components so students and staff can take a break when they feel stress, anxious our upset. | $5,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Bedichek Middle School | Picture This: English Language Learners Thriving Through Visual Literacy | Adolescent language learners in the sheltered ELA classroom need a lot of visual support, but most commercially available reading and curriculum materials for beginners are aimed at very young children. Graphic novels provide middle schoolers with age-appropriate stories while fulfilling their need for imagery, so students will be excited to cap their whole class novel study with a DIY book making project! Funding for Picture This: English Language Learners Thriving Through Visual Literacy will provide our classroom with a class set of novels, blank comic books, a field trip to inspire real-world writing about food for our vibrant student e-zine, and a color printer for customized support materials that are clear and specific. | $2,500 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Blazier Elementary School | Legoland and Beyond | This project aims to provide an enriching learning experience for kindergarten students. Throughout the year, students will engage in hands-on learning activities using legos in multiple content areas such as STEM, social studies and language arts. This will culminate in hands-on learning experiences at Legoland San Antonio. | $9,979 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Blazier Elementary School | Adapting the Library for All Learners | The project goal is to establish a more inclusive school library environment that caters to the sensory needs of every student, with a special emphasis on students with disabilities, struggling readers, and English language learners. To achieve this goal, the focus will be to create adapted books and STEM programming that welcomes and promotes individual differences. | $2,500 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Bryker Woods Elementary School | Inquiring Minds Want to Know | Our aim is to provide students with an opportunity to delve into the world of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) through an immersive Inquiry lab. Designed to ignite curiosity and stimulate hands-on exploration, our dynamic learning environment offers students of all ages the chance to investigate and experiment across disciplines, fostering creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. Our Inquiry lab equips students with the tools they need to thrive in the fast-evolving global future. | $8,200 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Burnet Middle School | Everyone is welcome/Todos son bienvenidos/????? ?? ??????? ?? | The Everyone is Welcome project will make our campus an accessible, welcoming and inviting place for the families of our students. By providing community dinners, newcomer banquets, festivals, resource fairs and student award ceremonies, families will have multiple opportunities to visit the school. During these opportunities, not only will the families be able to visit and learn about the school, build relationships with teachers and staff, they will be able to celebrate their students' accomplishments and connect to campus and community resources to support their student and family. | $9,700 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Campbell Elementary School | Meaningful Media & Mindful Movement | "Lights! Cameras! Action! The ""Meaningful Media & Mindful Movement" project cultivates ways for youth and adults to form educational partnerships, engage in activism, and catapult key social change initiatives. The project observes youth as consumers, citizen journalists, and social activists. This youth-adult partnership examines media and its evolution beyond traditional newspapers, magazines, radio, etc. and will also include a plethora of digital media options (i.e. website development; podcasts; stop motion animation; digital photography; live video broadcasting). In addition, through mindful movement and meditation; students will cultivate healthy lifestyles during their Social Emotional Learning (SEL) activities." | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Clayton Elementary School | Helping Cardinals SOAR | Providing access to an explicitly taught, scientifically-based phonics program will enable all students, particularly those vulnerable to reading difficulties, to SOAR to reading success in key literacy skills. | $9,956 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Cook Elementary School | Supporting our Students and staff emotional needs, Creating Self-regulation Stations and increasing morale among teachers and staff | Supporting our Students and staff emotional needs, Creating Self-regulation Stations and increasing morale among teachers and staff | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Crockett Early College High School | Ballet Folklorico de Crockett | Ballet Folklórico means "dances of the people" and reflects traditions, cultures, and beliefs that can be traced all the way back to ceremonial dances of Indigenous peoples. The style and movements of Ballet Folklórico incorporate many traditional dance techniques from Mexico's different regions, with each dance telling a beautiful story of its people, both past and present. This Austin Ed Fund Grant would support the beginnings of a sustainable Ballet Folklórico student group that would help to build community and a sense of belonging on our high school campus by tapping into the cultural assets that students bring with them to school each day. Our population is 73% Hispanic and so this group would not only benefit the dancers and their families, but performances would also be an opportunity to connect as a school community around these traditional cultural dances. | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Crockett Early College High School | Black Student Alliance | The Black Student Alliance (BSA) is a dynamic organization that unites black students, educators, and allies to foster a thriving community, where black history and culture are celebrated through campus-wide events, postsecondary readiness is nurtured through HBCU tours and college speakers, and a sense of belonging is cultivated through affirming spaces, collaborative initiatives, and a commitment to diversity, equity, and harmony at our campus. This holistic approach aims to improve attendance, enhance students' sense of belonging, promote academic success, and reduce behavior referrals, creating a more inclusive and supportive educational environment. | $9,530 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Dawson Elementary School | Pages in Motion: Engaging Literacy through Outdoor Story Walk | Our project aims to enhance the learning environment and promote literacy engagement by acquiring a story walk. This innovative outdoor reading experience will consist of a series of laminated storybook pages mounted along a designated path within our school grounds. As students, staff, and community members follow the path, they will have the opportunity to read the story, fostering a love for reading and promoting physical activity simultaneously. The story walk will serve as a captivating and interactive resource to enhance literacy skills, foster a love for reading, promote physical activity, and create a vibrant educational atmosphere. By investing in this project, we aim to revitalize our school, enhance student engagement, and strengthen community bonds, ultimately improving enrollment, staff retention, and student success. | $6,691 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Dobie Middle School | Lift Up and Give Back | Through the experience of live performance music, the choirs "Lift Up and Give Back"! Students experience the world of different cultures and "living history" by giving "free concerts" to seniors, and "free concerts" to multicultural communities. The TEKS-based learning goes beyond the melody diving into history and culture, and then students "experience" educationally, socially, and emotionally via performing and engaging their audiences - - a valuable experience for performers and listeners alike! | $2,500 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Dobie Middle School | Around the World in 180 Days | Maps are fundamental to learning about geography, and geography is an essential element of social studies. Currently our school has no maps larger than a poster, and the few globes we have are sadly outdated. This goal of this project is to spark the curiosity and imagination of students from diverse backgrounds through the use of large-scale, detailed maps and corresponding daily hands-on mini-lessons. Social Studies is about the people, places and events that have shaped our society. By leading with geography in a visually compelling, memorable way, social studies becomes more accessible to a wider variety of students, particularly emergent bilinguals and students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. | $2,500 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Galindo Elementary School | Galindo Food Pantry | We would like to establish a Food Pantry for the families of Galindo Elementary, a Title I school in South Austin. We would also like to educate families and students about healthy food. | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Garza Independent High School | Literary Journal | This project aims to provide students with a professionally curated digital literary journal, crafted and edited by their peers. This opportunity for sharing their writing has been previously inaccessible due to our self-paced and highly individualized campus structure. As the most diverse school in Austin, it is crucial for us to create an online publication that amplifies our students' unique perspectives and talents. The decentralized and inclusive nature of this project allows every student to contribute to the collective vision and gain valuable professional experience in editing. Writing possesses the power to unite a community, and while a few pockets of students currently enjoy authentic writing experiences with an eager audience, this project will extend that opportunity to the entire campus. | $1,857 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Garza Independent High School | Connecting Through Art | The Connecting Through Art Project provides opportunities for teen parents to co-lead a variety of program components that are intentionally structured for the teen parent to communicate, coordinate and collaborate with faculty, child development caregivers, the student body, their children, their families and with each other. Program components include two museum education trips, self-awareness activities, artist talks, student activity sessions, class projects, parenting education, parent-child engagement activities and a family event. Each program component is guided by one or more of the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Competencies. | $3,701 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Gorzycki Middle School | ESports Team | Tiger Esports is a teacher-run, after-school esports program designed to foster collaboration, social emotional learning, and friendly competition. Our esports team will compete against schools across Texas and is open and free to all 7th and 8th grade students. Our goal is to take something that's already widely popular amongst youth and to use it as a vehicle to foster a greater sense of community and social skills. | $5,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Govalle Elementary School | Roadie Student Store | The Roadie Student Store is a school wide incentive program for all students that attend Govalle Elementary school. The Student store will be created to help students apply math skills while earning bucks weekly for good attendance, good citizenship, parent participation at events, dress code adherence and teacher choice. Students will have the opportunity to save and/or purchase incentives every 9 weeks. | $5,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Govalle Elementary School | Govalle Roadie Socials: Rebuilding Community | Our initiative aims to enhance parent/teacher relationships, foster the recognition of culture, and improve communication to establish robust and impactful partnerships with families and community members. By fostering a sense of connection and harmony within our school community, we strive to empower families and ensure their active involvement in their children's education. | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Harris Elementary School | Peace of Mind: Multi-Sensory regulation leading to learning success. | Peace of Mind: Multi-Sensory regulation leading to learning success will help teach and allow children with special needs and other behavioral health challenges to regulate their bodies and mind in a way that allows them to achieve success in the classroom and beyond. | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Hart Elementary School | Bringing Hopes, Dreams, and Joy to our HART community | When we learn with joy, we never forget. Bringing joy to students through the arts and community connections fills hearts and breaks barriers. One can do wonders, yet together we can conquer our fears and look forward to fulfilling our hopes and dreams. | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Highland Park Elementary School | Scottie Strong Staff Wellness Thursdays | We aim to provide staff wellness opportunities once a month using the expertise of our own community, as we have certified yoga instructors, a Pilates instructor, and a professional dance teacher on our staff. | $350 | Staff Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Houston Elementary School | Eagle Welcome Center | The Eagle Welcome Center would provide parents, families, and community members with the necessary resources to understand what is happening at our elementary school. The center would provide information, increase community engagement, and close the gap of accessibility to technological support for high needs families. The Eagle Welcome Center (EWC) would be a comfortable meeting space that would include clear signage, quick links, an event bulletin board, computers, audio-visual equipment, and space for parent events. | $9,800 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Houston Elementary School | ¡Vamos a escribir juntos! | ¡Vamos a escribir juntos! will value our students' identity, give them agency, and voice through writing. This project will give our emergent bilingual students access to diverse and multilingual books, specifically, graphic novels and picture books that will serve as inspirations for their own stories. The project will also give us access to various books that will serve as mentor text for the stories we will write and share with the campus and community. Students will also receive a variety of writing tools to create a space and make writing more engaging and fun! | $5,000 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Kealing Middle School | Cultural Relvancy: Jewelry Making and Sewing | The project will relate to culturally relevant teaching for students and their parents by introducing them to sewing and jewelry making. The students will research the various materials used for sewing and making items..The project will use the primary strategy of the AVID Program of Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization, and Reading for fostering a better understanding of strategy which can be used in all of their classes. This also will be an avenue to involve parents in their child's education while creating these items themselves. | $2,500 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Linder Elementary School | Hands-on STEM Engagement | We will further our campus-wide STEM and outdoor learning focus while addressing our challenges with a lack of indoor space through three engaging learning opportunities - problem-based learning through hands-on STEM kits, experiential learning in our vegetable and pollinator garden, and social and emotional development through raising chickens. | $8,750 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Lively Middle School | The Anthropologist's Lens: Unearthing Lost Civilizations | "The Anthropologist's Lens: Unearthing Lost Civilizations" aims to support an immersive and comprehensive anthropological study of various ancient civilizations throughout the world. This project focuses on unearthing and understanding the remnants of long-lost civilizations to shed light on their socio-cultural practices, technological advancements, and their impact on the development of human societies through immersive ancient civilization experiences, on-site archeological digs, museum visits, and more! | $2,500 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Lively Middle School | Attendance is crucial for academics and building connections with our EB population | Lively Middle School is a captivating location for building a culture through inclusive experiences that allow for individuality and grace to be extended to each person as we learn to appreciate our differences and build safe places for all. Our student population is 48% EB and with this population we need to find ways to communicate where each student feels heard. As we look to this coming school year and plan what the next experience is to build connections we want to consider implementing rhythm circles for our students, staff and community. The foundation for this bridge needs to be strong and will require multiple opportunities to reach the capacity necessary to bring change. | $6,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Marshall Middle School | Founding a Community of Readers | We will create a robust and joyful community of readers-students, staff, and parents- by purchasing student-centered, student-curated books for the library, funding student, staff and parent book club snacks and materials, and providing funds for field trips to the Austin Public Library and independent bookstores! | $5,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Martin Middle School | Literacy First | My students deserve the best options for reading and learning on-line using curriculum that available through AVID and my school district in addition to online and paper copies of reading via SCOPE Magazine. | $8,471 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Menchaca Elementary School | Peace Area Supplies | Peace areas provide students with the space and tools to help them self-regulate and manage their emotions within the classroom. This project will create 43 peace area kits for 43 classrooms at our Elementary Campus. This includes all homeroom classrooms, special education classrooms, and essential area classrooms. These peace area kits, paired with lessons for implementation, will help teachers co-create a classroom community that keeps students and their emotional wellbeing at the center in order to get their brains ready for learning. | $3,226 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Navarro Early College High School | Women Who Weld Cohort #2 | "Women Who Weld" is an innovative program that aims to offer young women a wide range of co-curricular and extracurricular opportunities, allowing them to explore and pursue careers in the skilled trades. The program's primary objectives encompass recruiting, training, retaining, and facilitating the placement of participants in skilled trade careers. For Cohort #2, the program will incorporate both returning participants and newcomers who are in the initial stages of discovering skilled trades. | $2,500 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Navarro Early College High School | Empowering Education: Enhancing College Access for Students of Color and Parental Engagement | Our ECHS has a robust set of offerings for students that can link them to continuing education and to the world of work, including P-Tech, many CTE programs, AP classes, and Dual Credit and Early College programs with Austin Community College. Last year we began a focused program to educate parents and students about these opportunities to increase their awareness, interest and understanding of Early College programs. This summer, the number of students who participated in our Summer Bridge Camp for freshmen entering ECHS tripled from the prior year! We seek to build on this success through continued parent and student education and by reaching down into our two main feeder middle schools to educate those students and parents as well. | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Norman-Sims Elementary School | Adapted Sport in Physical Education | This project aims to promote inclusion in the general physical education (GPE) setting by integrating adapted sports (sports for individuals with disabilities) alongside current sports and skills being taught. Inclusion education advocates for students with disabilities to learn alongside their peers without disabilities. To create a truly inclusive model, it is important for students without disabilities to also learn the skills and participate in the sports available to students with disabilities. By implementing this approach, we aim to foster a supportive and inclusive environment that benefits all students while teaching them how to advocate for themselves and each other, develop empathy, and create an environment where all abilities are welcomed and celebrated. | $3,400 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Norman-Sims Elementary School | Sensory Space | I would like to create two sensory/calming spaces in our school. One space would be in my classroom (special ed) and one space would be in the pre-k/kinder hallway. This space would include things that students would use in order to work out some of their big feelings. The spaces would be open to all students in the school. | $1,500 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Odom Elementary School | Neurosequential Model in Education Community Babywearing Outreach | Our project focuses on supporting our community of caregivers by creating a lending library of babywearing wraps and carriers to lend to community members at regular support meetings held at the school. This group will focus on the Neurosequential Model in Education to inform parents about brain development and to give them tools and resources to support their families and children throughout the stages of their development. This group is intended to support and recruit families with babies and toddlers who are zoned for our school, but will provide support for the community at large. | $6,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Ortega Elementary School | Families Matter | This project will encompass a multitude of hands-on parent and family engagement activities, classes, and events throughout the school year to support student success - academically, emotionally, and socially. The goal for this project is to provide many opportunities for students, families, and the school community to come together to learn and grow along one another with activities such as Family Fun Nights that focus on core subjects (math, reading, and science) and fine arts, field trips, and health and fitness classes. | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Overton Elementary School | Arriving Right | PreK 3 students in our classroom are starting their days purposefully, calmly and safely. The use of a backpack is an important milestone for our students. Having a beautiful, specifically-designed mobile backpack cart will help students begin their days with the security of having a place for their personal belongings. | $1,284 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Patton Elementary School | Tamil/Telugu Afterschool Program | Cultural diversity and school culture are important for developing inclusivity and school pride. This is an opportunity for a majority West Austin campus to provide language support to a newcomer population not often served. If funded, this proposal will enhance the L1 of Tamil and Telugu speaking students at Selected Elementary School. Research on bilingualism suggests that. the more skilled the individual is in the first language (Tamil and Telugu), the faster he/she will learn a second language (English). Parents want their children to be bilingual and research shows that being bilingual affects the brain in many ways. One effect is increasing neural plasticity, or the ability of the brain's neural networks to reorganize and grow with time. | $10,000 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Patton Elementary School | Pioneer Collaborative Learning Lab | The Pioneer Collaborative Learning Lab is a space dedicated to bringing educators and students together to access hands on learning and provide coaching and mentoring. Third and Fourth grades are currently housed in portables, restricting the space available to collaborate within and across grade levels. This space is designed to give teachers a space that is flexible and allows collaboration amongst teams. | $4,322 | Staff Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Reilly Elementary School | Music Classroom Set of Ukuleles and/or Recorders + Music Books | The students at XYZ Elementary will greatly benefit from the opportunity to learn to play an instrument in music class, throughout the formative primary years of education. Learning to play an instrument together helps apply the music theory taught by the instructor and gives these young individuals a greater and potentially lifetime appreciation for making music. | $2,250 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Rodriguez Elementary School | STEM Outside the Classroom | Engage and inspire PreK through 6th-grade students in STEM education through a series of enriching activities such as a campus-wide science fair, monthly STEM days, Cities in Space Competition, Cardboard Arcade Project, and a 3-day outdoor learning experience. Our goal is to foster greater excitement, engagement, and community involvement in the world of STEM. | $10,000 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Sadler Means Young Women's Leadership Academy | Young Women's Leadership Wellness Project | Our leadership academy focuses on the whole child, and overall wellness of each of our students. Our students are in need of health and wellness space with updated weight room, equipment, ice machine for injuries, a time clock board for athletic events, and washer and dryer to wash uniforms and physical education clothing for students who may not have access to such at home. we would also like the opportunity to take our young leaders on field trips that promote health and wellness for athletes and physical education students. | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | St Elmo Elementary School | Inspiring the Future Scientists | This project is based on the philosophy that people learn best in the outdoors through direct experience with the natural world that surrounds them. By providing opportunities for children to experience the Colorado River's beauty firsthand, the education and recreation programs not only teach, but also inspire. | $2,500 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Sunset Valley Elementary School | SVE Staff Wellness | Today more than ever it is important to appreciate our teachers and show them how much we value them on our campus. We want to treat our teachers this school year with several activities to motivate them to come and give the best of them to our students. We want to prioritize the wellbeing of all staff in order to support our teachers and keep our students happy. | $8,020 | Staff Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Sunset Valley Elementary School | Outdoor Learning Spaces for Students Success | Having outdoor learning spaces for students will build a special culture in our school where we will all share a common language, values, purpose, and connection, which will ultimately develop positive feelings and memories around our campus. PK to 5th-grade classes will have multiple opportunities to enhance their learning when using the outdoor learning areas. | $10,000 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Travis Early College High School | Rebels with a Cause | The project aims to create welcoming, inclusive spaces and events to bring our families, students, staff, and community members together. The space will be designed to provide parent engagement events as well as stocked resources like backpacks and school supplies for students. In addition, the project will support parent engagement events like Back to School Night, our spring festival, and student celebrations/recognition events. | $7,300 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Travis Heights Elementary School | Celebrando Multilingual Writers | We aim to establish a Project Based Learning (PBL) writing workshop that celebrates the stories and language practices of our students by providing writing strategies and authentic, culturally relevant mentor texts, specifically those that model translanguaging practices. Students will draw inspiration from the authors in order to write their own stories about family, immigration, identity, and culture. We hope to publish these stories to create a collection of books in our campus library and to publish a digital collection for the community to access. | $7,000 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Travis Heights Elementary School | THES Robotics Innovation Lab | This project aims to establish an innovation and programming learning lab at our school, providing students with access to 3D printer, Sphero robots, and CAD software. The lab will promote hands-on learning and problem solving, inspire creativity, and develop skills in technology and programming, while also inviting community members to assist and showcase careers in these fields. | $4,500 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Walnut Creek Elementary School | BRIDGING THE NATURE GAP: Adventures in Outdoor Learning | Students will have an opportunity to bridge the "Nature Gap". Students will be able to participate in Real Life "Hands On" experiences at The Outdoor School that: enrich their understanding of Science content; develop important life skills such as leadership, collaboration and critical thinking; advance physical/mental health, self-esteem and emotional wellbeing. In addition, the Students will journal and write about their experiences. Finally, these real life "hands on" experiences will help our Students become responsible Environmental Stewards and Citizens. | $9,890 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Walnut Creek Elementary School | Nearpod (Student/teacher Interaction System) | Nearpod is an interactive, student-facing, software that has proven progress in state testing, engagement, grades, and collaboration among students in diverse classrooms. With 2 years of experience using this software personally, I was able to create more engaging lesson plans, faster. I was able to save and build upon more personalized learning paths with a much more organized interface. Nearpod allows the teacher to evaluate/support student performance immediately on a daily basis. We can identify behavioral change, both positive and negative, and improve our own redirection as we plan. It provides a vast library of data-tested lesson templates, customizable interactive videos, modules, and endless resources for strengthening diverse student progress. | $7,000 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Widen Elementary School | Empowering Innovation: Fueling Creativity through Maker spaces | Our project aims to enhance the school library with a vibrant maker space, fostering a culture of creativity and hands-on learning. By equipping the space with maker tools, such as legos, engineering materials, arts and crafts, and robotics coding kits, students will have the opportunity to explore STEAM subjects, unleash their innovative ideas, and engage in collaborative projects. This maker space will empower students to develop critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, and ignite a passion for lifelong learning. | $10,000 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Widen Elementary School | Confidence in Learning | Please help me give my students the joy of developing communication confidence to help them become better self-advocates in the classroom and in their community. Students enjoy reading aloud, so by having the proper white boards and floor cushions would help empower them while they learn. Students would be able to maximize their learning during all learning center activities and read aloud and would enjoy the floor cushions. | $1,850 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Winn Montessori School | Mentoring Novice Teachers Through a Co-Teaching Model | In August 2022, the Texas Education Agency reported that last year over 42,000 teachers in Texas classrooms were new to the profession, and of those, roughly 40% were uncertified or alternatively certified, meaning they often lacked rigorous preparation and training. To support teacher retention and increased academic outcomes on our campus, effective veteran teachers would be paid a competitive salary to provide daily, in-person mentoring and co-teaching to novice teachers for the first 4-6 weeks of the school year with monthly check-ins to follow. Mentors would provide feedback, model lessons and interactions, and support the creation of a strong learning environment during the critical first weeks of school when relationships and routines are established. | $10,000 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2023 Inspire the Future Grant | Zavala Elementary School | We Can Improve | We believe that providing relaxing and calming spaces for faculty and staff to utilize, will provide them the necessary resources for managing stress, to support each other, and to move past challenging thoughts and emotions that they may be experiencing. | $10,000 | Staff Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Akins Early College High School | Wings Up, Wellness Up! | Establish and maintain multi-level systems that provide innovative and tangible resources and assistance for staff self-care. These systems aim to create self-care support that address physical, cognitive, and social/emotional needs of teachers and staff. This will in turn improve the overall campus climate and learning environment. | $10,000.00 | Staff Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Akins Early College High School | Law Practicum Legal Resources Project | The Legal Resources Project will provide its 17 practicum students with an immersive educational experience in which with the assistance of the instructor and others, they will 1) visit and report about three law schools in the state, 2) organize two Saturday legal clinics to provide basic information about immigration and wills & estate law to students, teachers, staff, and the public, and 3) produce and present a campus-wide school safety campaign. | $4,050.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Alternative Learning Center | Teaching through Community | Teaching through Community develops students? emotional intelligence by establishing and building school and classroom culture. The series builds students? and educators? capacity to participate in innovative Social Emotional Learning (SEL) activities with a trauma-informed, multicultural, and equity lens. Educators will develop their classroom communities designed to equip students with SEL tools that focus on holistic wellness practices, resilience, mindset, social justice, compassion, and leadership. In turn, students will use the connection they have developed with their school community to apply the skills they have learned in their personal lives. | $2,500.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders | Collaborative Monotype Mural | We are wanting to create a printmaking lesson involving a monotype demo and class at Flatbed Press Contemporary Printing Studio. Students would learn how to create monotypes and etchings and create several collaborative murals to take back to the school to be displayed on campus. They would then return to campus and create positive posters and Thank you cards for teachers using what they have learned. They would also create a collaborative mural using linoleum reduction printing. I am including a quote for 150 students to take 5 separate monotype classes throughout the year at Flatbed press and a quote for materials we would need to do projects once we return to campus. | $7,000.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders | Healing through Community Spaces and Literature | Through this project we will create a positive impact on our community?s mental health by bringing a student mindfulness/meditation/prayer room to the library, updating our Teacher Mindfulness Room, and adding mental health resources and literature to the library collection. Research shows being intentional about prioritizing mental health can help eliminate anxiety and depression, reduce stress, improve concentration, minimize frustration and anger, increase happiness, and more. We will provide a relaxing atmosphere and refuge from the intensity of the classroom so our students can learn better and so our teachers can better serve our students. | $6,000.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Austin ISD Department | Academia Cuauhtli - Aztech Kidz Code Summer Camp | The Academia Cuauhtli - Aztech Kidz code summer camp is a project-based, culturally sustaining Indigenous STEM program for second to fourth-grade students attending AISD. Through this program, students will learn the following: coding, video game design, digital monetization, app development, and Danza Mexica in both English and Spanish. Additionally, we will be building a university-community research partnership between the University of Texas at Austin?s Education Policy and Planning Program and AISD teachers to document and add to the literature on culturally relevant/sustaining pedagogy best practices (qualitative) and analyze the impacts of culturally relevant/sustaining pedagogy on students (quantitatively). As such, we will be working with pre-service and in-service Indigenous and Latinx teachers to collaborate on research-based best pedagogical practices for students of color. | $8,000.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Austin ISD Department | Sewing Friendships: Sewing Support Groups for Refugee Women and Students | This grant project will purchase sewing machines and materials for a biweekly sewing group that also functions as a support group for female Afghan students and their mothers. Community building and therapeutic activities will be built-in to group meetings to facilitate conversation, shared experience and friendship building. Through this program, we hope to help build stronger community bonds throughout the AISD refugee population by providing a safe and empowering space for women to work together as well as introduce new, exciting cross cultural experiences to the broader AISD/Austin community. | $7,900.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Austin ISD Department | Regulating our Mind & Body: Social Work Intern Sensory Kits | Austin ISD's Student Support Services department partners with the University of Texas at Austin?s Steve Hicks School of Social Work and local non-profit Cap City Kids to host 10-12 master?s social work interns, placed throughout the district at 12-15 campuses. These social work interns provide a variety of Tier 1 & 2 supports to economically disadvantaged, at-risk, and/or chronically absent students with the end goal of improving student performance. | $1,650.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Austin ISD Department | Bringing our mission to life; connecting cafeteria staff to sustainability, glob | The mission of Austin ISD Food Service is to support the achievement of all students by expanding food access, serving healthy, tasty meals, and providing learning opportunities about nutrition, cultural foodways and the food system. Through this project, we aim to provide frontline cafeteria staff with unique field trips and experiences that highlight our mission. By visiting local vendors and engaging in hands-on learning opportunities, staff will come together to expand and share their knowledge of sustainability, local foods, global flavors, and personal wellness. | $5,000.00 | Staff Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Austin ISD Department | La Colaborativa Curriculum Project | La Colaborativa Cuauhtli Project is a series of sessions that brings bilingual, Spanish/ English educators together to explore, discuss and reflect on how languages and cultures from Latin America can result in innovated teaching through a curriculum that includes high-impact strategies and ways of teaching emergent bilinguals in the Dual language classroom. | $10,000.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Becker Elementary | Becker Elementary Running Team | Last year our first ever Becker running team won the largest and fastest team at the Statesman Capitol 10k. We had 42 students, 25 parents and 5 staff compete and we need some help to make sure that next year?s running team gets off on the right foot! Please help us to instill a love for running early and continue this running team enrichment opportunity for our Becker students. | $750.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Blanton Elementary | Improving Learning by Building a Sensory Friendly School | Nearly everyone has experienced sensory sensitivity at some point. If you've ever found it challenging to focus on a conversation in a noisy echoing restaurant or put on headphones and an eyeshade to block out the world on a long flight, you've experienced it. This project will equip the whole Blanton community with learning and tools to help students learn more effectively by respecting varying levels of sensory sensitivity and making Blanton a more sensory friendly school. This project will target both collective mindset and develop proficiency in self-regulation and choosing tools to help build success. The overarching goal of this project is to improve student achievement and reduce achievement gaps by acknowledging that students who are calm, centered, and self-regulated are better able to focus, learn, and achieve AND schools can teach students self regulation strategies. | $6,000.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Blazier Elementary | Sensory Gym and Rooms | Build/create/grow a sensory gym and two sensory rooms for our Life Skills and SCORES program within our school. Our vision is the creation of a child centered sensory gym and rooms where children are provided with wonderful opportunities to enhance their physical (movement and balance sense, body awareness sense, fine motor skills, bilateral coordination) and cognitive (cause and effect reasoning and social development) skills, in a fun and non-threatening way. | $2,500.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Blazier Elementary | Full STEM Ahead: 5th Grade STEM Lab! | This project would help our 5th Grade team stock their brand new STEM lab with a variety of materials, models, and kits to enhance our teaching of science content with math, technology, engineering, and problem-solving woven throughout. Materials such as Circuit Motor Challenge kits, Play-Doh for content-focused stop motion, a demonstration stream table, and Snap Circuit Green energy sets will help our diverse group of 5th graders build a STEM identity while applying new vocabulary and concepts in a meaningful and hands-on way this year and for many years to come. | $3,550.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Burnet Middle School | STEAM Night | STEAM Night will be an opportunity for our students, teachers, and our community to exhibit a robust sample of achievements by showing student?s projects and models. Participants will engage with students and community members around a diverse offering of subject areas and topics. Our teachers will collaborate to create a successful event and students will expand their abilities to share what they have learned. | $7,200.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Clifton Career Development School | Clifton Pride: Strengthening Our Clifton Community to Disrupt Predictable Post-S | This project aims to build a strong sense of community for our Clifton students and families that fosters an inclusive sense of belonging and pride for students who are often marginalized in other spaces. The objectives and corresponding strategies will help us recruit new students and also support our current students in completing all three years of our program. As a result, our anticipated long-term impact will be to continue disrupting the predictable post-secondary outcomes for historically-undeserved students. | $5,000.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Cook Elementary | PBL Possiblilities | The PBL Possibilities Project will help fund innovative teaching, school-wide PBL opportunities directed specifically for our diverse student needs. This grant will cover costs which include: guest speakers such as local authors, scientists, and engineers; field trips for authentic learning experiences, and hands-on materials for students to collaborate, create and present PBL projects to show-case for our school, parents, and community. | $5,000.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Crockett Early College High School | NISS @Crockett ECHS(Novel Interventions for SpEd Students. | The goal of this grant is to enhance achievement and academic success in students receiving SpEd services at Crockett ECHS. We are seeking funds to implement a novel ?informal instruction? methodology, that involves SEL interventions, and 1-on-1 restorative conversations coupled with targeted pullouts for academic support. Case managers will begin these interventions at start of 2022/23 SY by interacting with every student in their caseload, build relationships and gauge academic and emotional needs. Our classrooms will need to be equipped with specific tools (reading materials, board games, sensory manipulatives, art supplies, reward programs), in order to function as an interactive and engaging environment conducive for academic and personal growth. This initiative when implemented diligently round-the-year, will not only take the load off school counselors but can also be a creative way to motivate our special needs students, and prepare them to become successful community citizens. | $6,020.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Dobie Middle School | Bringing Back Dobie Traditions | The project will bring families to the Dobie Middle School for these life-touching milestones for the students and community family engagement. This will help boost school morale for students, staff, and parents. The community will be able to support and work on making ideas a reality and support the school; we are in need of supplies and items for the garden, field trips, dances, movie nights and celebration ceremonies. | $10,000.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Eastside Early College High School | Eastside Battle of the Books | The English Language Arts Department in collaboration with the library will organize a high school Battle of the Books competition within our school. Each ELA class will form a reading team complete with team names. Each team will collectively read ten titles over the fall semester and compete in a trivia challenge before winter break. The winning team will be rewarded with a custom trophy and pizza party. This innovative adaptation of the traditional Battle of the Books competition will increase reading fluency and standardized test scores for our campus. We would like to celebrate team reading success with a trophy to be displayed at the school, like other sports trophies. | $7,290.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Galindo Elementary | Disabled is Not a Dirty Word, Let's Include Disabled Characters in Our Library | One in four Americans have a disability but only 3.4% of children's books include disabled characters. We want to include more books in our school's library to celebrate diversity. | $810.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Galindo Elementary | Linking the Present to the Past: Experiencing Texas History Through Engaging Fie | The prominent social studies topic for fourth-graders is Texas and its history. This project will provide 119 fourth-grade students with the opportunity to apply what they are learning in the classroom to a hands-on/minds-on experience by visiting the Bullock Texas State History Museum, the Alamo, and the UTSA Institute of Texas Cultures (a Smithsonian Affiliate). | $4,210.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Govalle Elementary | Conscious Disciple Resources | This grant would provide needed online training and classroom materials for the Conscious Discipline program for our teachers to better meet the needs of our students and families. | $2,380.00 | Staff Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Govalle Elementary | Capturing our amazing experiences and learning through a school yearbook! | Our school community believes in the power of capturing our students? shared experiences and talents through a school yearbook. From students performing in our school plays, talent shows and other programs to experiencing their first overnight camp, students and families can share their stories and remember their school year through a yearbook for the first time on our campus. | $5,750.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Graduation Prep Academy at Travis | Healthcare Cohort | The Healthcare Cohort directly aligns with the efforts of the Austin Ed Fund of "seeking innovative approaches from teachers and staff that address the inequities found in our community and positively impact marginalized people" by helping break cycles of poverty through education and training for an industry-based certification in Healthcare while decreasing the number of student dropouts, increasing the graduation rate and contributing 20 new professionals to the healthcare workforce who represent the community. | $2,500.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Gus Garcia Young Men's Leadership Academy | Dragon Fire Media | This project seeks to create a new media lab and Afterschool club. This club will create and run a school YouTube channel and will also create and publish the school yearbook. | $10,000.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Harris Elementary | Creating Magical Recipes for Student Learning- The Teachers? Collaborative Roo | In the spirit of continuous growth, this upcoming year for the 2022- 2023 school year, we would like to capitalize on our PLCs by creating a designated furnished area where instructional staff feels comfortable to commit in collaborative discussion about teaching and learning. By capturing each other?s funds of educational knowledge the result will improve student growth and achievement. | $4,500.00 | Staff Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Houston Elementary | For the Love of Reading... Sit and Enjoy! | Help me give my 5th grade students access to bilingual culturally relevant texts in both English and Spanish, to use during our novel studies, their own reading response journal, PLUS a comfy, relaxing, and inviting spot with flexible seating for them to enjoy their reading. | $1,930.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Kocurek Elementary | Success in Science | Success in Science will bring a wealth of hands-on science experiences to our diverse population of learners. Students in grades 3-5 will participate in engaging and interactive field trips to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve, Westcave Outdoor Discovery Center, and the LCRA Red Bud Center while teachers will obtain the materials necessary to craft specific lessons related to the material covered on the field trips as well as other content in our science curriculum. Success in Science will give our students the boost they need to improve science knowledge and outcomes, and help our school bridge learning gaps. | $4,640.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Kocurek Elementary | The Writing Barn Retreat: Cultivating Craft within a Literary Community | The Writing Barn retreat kickstarts the campus-wide initiative to develop both teacher and student writing abilities and improve student academic outcomes in all subject areas. Our teaching faculty will participate in writing professional development at The Writing Barn, a resource in our school neighborhood, and apply their learning during classroom instruction. Students in grades 2, 3, 4, and 5 will participate in walking field trips to The Writing Barn to deepen their understanding of the writing process and learn strategies to develop their craft. | $9,450.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Langford Elementary | STEMulate Your Mind with Robotics! | STEMulate your mind with Vex Robotics! This grant will help fund the purchase of multiple Vex robotics bundles for the entire campus and will bring real-world learning into the classroom. Each bundle includes multiple student robotic kits and teacher PD to help tie in science, math, engineering, arts, and technology into every day learning in all subjects. This innovative teaching will build collaboration, critical thinking, and teamwork and help prepare our students for the 21st century. | $8,600.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Linder Elementary | We Knew We Could! Cultivating Resiliency in our littlest learners through the po | Our PK-2 mobile STREAM cart will make project based learning more accessible to our lower school teachers. Through the use of STREAM bins, hands on manipulative resources, MakerSpace resources, and coding robots our PK-2 learners will be given the opportunity to hone self regulation skills taught during Social Emotional Learning (SEL) focused time in a safe, academic environment to close the gap in developmental growth lost during COVID. | $10,000.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Lively Middle School | Get Out and Learn: Rebuilding and creating outdoor learning environments | This student centered project will be for them to design and update 3 spaces around our campus that they will be used for engaging lessons, socialization, prayer and mediation. While our school is very inclusive we would like to continue to foster that idea outside the school walls. We see these areas as places for all to rest, reflect and learn. | $5,000.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Lively Middle School | Lively Voice Podcast Project | Lively Voice Podcast Project will provide a platform for students to apply and improve their digital literacy skills by applying podcast production practices using audio editing softwares. This project promotes digital media skills as well as critical thinking skills by allowing students to research content of interest and using digital resources to narrate an evaluate different stories and points of views. Our podcast project, will allow the community to connect with the outputs created by the students in order to be part of their learning process. | $2,500.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Mathews Elementary | Project Name: Stem, STEAM, Make, Dream: Reimagining the Culture of Science, Te | Our book study of Stem, STEAM, Make, Dream by Dr. Christopher Emdin will allow our staff to engage in professional learning together, exploring how our MakerEd philosophy can be improved on by reimagining how the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics can help all students connect with and see themselves as a part of STEM/STEAM. Staff will read, learn, and apply knowledge to make STEM and STEAM more assessable to all students and help each child see a future for him/her/themselves as creators, innovators, mathematicians, artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs. | $1,300.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | McBee Elementary | Book Bunches and Beyond: Cultivating a Schoolwide Reading Community using the Bl | The Book Bunches and Beyond program brings together students across grade levels in the classroom and in the school library to read and discuss books for pleasure. The program uses the Texas Bluebonnet and Tejas Star reading lists as a foundation for encouraging students to read across genres and in their preferred language, and nurtures a school-wide culture of reading. | $5,000.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | McCallum High School | Neurosequential Model in Education Trainer Program | The Neurosequential Model in Education trainers program will prepare us to teach core concepts to staff that impact learning. These include the basics of brain organization, brain development, understanding state-dependent learning, the stress response system, and the impact of trauma on children. This will help educators at our campus better understand and teach students by offering practical strategies and classroom practices that can help ALL students learn in an optimal way. | $8,500.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Navarro Early College High School | Women Who Weld | "Women Who Weld" is a program that focuses on providing extracurricular opportunities for young women to be exposed to careers in the skilled trades. Goals include recruiting, training, retaining, and placing program participants in skilled trade careers. Although the program focuses primarily on welding, many of the skills taught are transferrable to other trades such as carpentry, pluming, and electrical. | $2,500.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Navarro Early College High School | Realizing the Dream of Early College for All | Our ECHS has a robust set of offerings for students that can link them to continuing education and to the world of work, including P-Tech, many CTE programs, AP classes and the ECHS partnership with ACC. Although these many opportunities exist for students to explore academic and vocational interests and prepare for college, many students are disconnected. This project aims to engage all students and their parents more deeply in understanding the Early College program and the other opportunities that exist at our school for college and career preparation. | $10,000.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Ortega Elementary | Healthy Habits Here We Come | This project will encompass many aspects of healthier habits for our entire school community ? students, families, teachers, and all school staff. The goal for this project is to provide ways to destress and offer SEL, mental, and physical education support to our school community by means of yoga classes, dance classes, meditation, and physical fitness apps, and a sensory/mindfulness room. | $10,000.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Overton Elementary | Collaborative Space for All | Our school has been developing a STEM/Makerspace culture in the past couple of years. Through grants, Donors Choose, personal purchases, we have secured a Makerspace/STEM room and have been adding resources little by little. We have building materials, craft materials, augmented reality, and coding resources. We are now ready to enter the next phase of establishing the space for all teachers and students to use the resources. The goal is for classroom teachers, instructional coaches, our counselor, librarian, and all staff to have access to hands-on materials in a collaborative environment. We believe that project-based learning through experiences promotes critical thinking, designing, problem solving, and iteration. The space needs flexible furniture that establishes the STEM lab as a unique location that welcomes all. As our teachers and staff feel more welcomed, we will build skills through professional learning workshops and in turn, they will feel inspired and prepared to bring their classrooms/groups into the STEM space for lessons, tinkering, project-based learning, and more! | $10,000.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Patton Elementary | Flexing our Brains | We would like to provide our students with a variety of flexible seating options. Studies have shown that movement is beneficial to learning, and our traditional table and chair setups do not allow for the movement our students need. We also want to empower our students with the choice of where and how they learn best. | $1,000.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Reilly Elementary | Reilly Athletic Association (Dragon/Lion Dance Team) | Three stakeholders, the Reilly campus principal, Mandarin specialist and community member/AISD parent want to start an after-school program, the Reilly Athletic Association ????? (Dragon/Lion Dance Team) which seeks to establish a hands-on opportunity for students at Reilly Elementary, where approximately 41% are identified as Multi-language Learners (Emergent Bilinguals) and 39% are economically disadvantaged. This grant would allow our program to bridge our diverse communities through cross-cultural exposure by bringing Chinese culture, music and physical education directly to the 2nd-5th graders. We would be able to purchase authentic cultural supplies to provide hands-on learning experiences with dragon and lion dance, Chinese martial arts and Chinese musical instruments. | $9,990.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Rosedale School | Transition student life skills project | This project will provide students with disabilities opportunities to engage with the community and develop daily living skills to prepare them for life after graduation. Students will be given access to community activities to will enrich their lives and teach them how to plan classroom activities, manage money and balance budgets. | $2,500.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Small Middle School | From Fluent Readers to Lifelong Learners | Students need reading fluency and comprehension schools to be successful learners. When students read fluently, they can spend more time focusing on what the text is saying. The goal of this project is to encourage lifelong learning through successful reading. | $4,550.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Sunset Valley Elementary | Sensory Room for early childhood and life skills | A sensory room is a unique and special space that provides multi-sensory resources to support all students. Our vision is to support our student's sensory needs to enable them to engage in learning. This space will help students to develop social-emotional, gross and fine motor skills while students acquire language. The sensory room will have different stations where students will be available to develop these skills by playing hands-on activities. The recent pandemic, has affected our students tremendously for this reason we believe students will benefit from a student-centered multi-sensory space that invites all students. Most importantly, a sensory room for our Early Childhood and special needs students whom need help and support with self-regulation. | $10,000.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Travis Early College High School | People as Primary Sources | Freshman World Geography students will earn course credit while gaining historical knowledge and building language, research, and technical skills by creating living, primary historical sources through a year-long inquiry into their own identity, culture, and heritage, capturing dialogue with family and community partners using cutting edge software. Collaborating with the Texas Folk Life ?Stories From Deep in the Heart? and the Mexican American Cultural Center?s ?Teen Caminos? programs through in-class workshops, field trips, peer mentoring, and event planning, students will learn digital storytelling by producing their own interviews, which will provide a basis for research and creative multi-media content for exhibition, celebration, and curation at the end of the year. The focal point of the project is student well-being - building student agency through culturally responsive, interpersonal communication that actively engages them in a project that builds not only pride in their school, but their in own sense of autonomy, belonging, and competence within it. | $9,920.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Travis Heights Elementary | Reimagining the Coop | Our youngest learners (Pk3, Pk4, and K) need creative and multi-sensory learning opportunities. The area that previously held our chicken coop is begging to be repurposed for just this reason. | $4,000.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Williams Elementary | Read X 3 | The pandemic negatively affected our teachers the ability to provide literacy instruction and intervention. We have documented more than one-half of our 3rd grade students in 2020-2022 were identified with a reading deficiency at some point between 1st -3rd grade. We would like resources and funding to support the following: Really Great Reading is the program we have adopted for Tier I reading support. We would like to continue to improve Tier I literacy instruction so that fewer students require intervention. Funding would support more materials and reorder new consumables for incoming students. Provide additional funding for literacy professional development and other literacy resources: PD and Books...lots of books to send home for student reading and a read aloud for parent read aloud. Focus on meeting students? literacy needs to address students? missed learning opportunities: small group instruction support. Support teacher implementation with professional development and materials. | $10,000.00 | Innovative Teaching |
| 2022 Grant Program | Wooldridge Elementary | Joy for Reading | Based on the audio book, Joy of Reading by Donnalyn Miller ( follow up to the Book Whisperer) the only way to improve reading proficiency and test scores is to get books that students want to read in their hands and provide time for them to read. | $1,510.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Wooldridge Elementary | Building a Better Book Fair: The Collaborative Book Market | A collaborative Book Market shared among three campuses provides a more equitable and joyful Book Fair experience for all students. This project transforms the traditional Book Fair model from a one-size-fits-all model into a tailored experience that better fits the needs and wants of the students served. | $8,000.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2022 Grant Program | Zilker Elementary | Girls on the Run | Girls on the Run is a positive youth development program that inspires girls to be healthy, joyful and confident through a hands-on curriculum that creatively integrates running. Girls in 3rd through 5th grade meet twice weekly with volunteer coaches to work through a curriculum designed to empower girls with critical life skills while fostering a love of physical activity. | $3,550.00 | Student Wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Alternative Learning Center | PBL Training | CERTL will provide access to its online inquiry-based learning training for Lydia Bothwell of Austin ISD. The nteractive training will be housed in the Canvas learning management system and will be monitored by Lead Trainers at CERTL. Access to the Canvas course will expire one year after initial activation. | $129.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Alternative Learning Center | P.S.O.S. (Please Stock Our Shelves) - ALC Campus Store | The ALC Campus Store will exist to serve the needs of the students, families, faculty, staff, visitors, and friends of the Alternative Learning Center. Its primary mission is to provide the food, personal hygiene, supplies, imprinted clothing and gift items, and services needed by the aforementioned constituencies?especially ALC students and families. | $6,400.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Alternative Learning Center | Professional Development Collaborative Projects | The professional development objective for the 2021-2022 school year is for ALC staff teams to collaborate on an action-research project. Teams will plan professional development projects centered on educators? and students? needs. After researching and learning best practices, teachers will implement what they have learned, document the impact of their professional learning on the teaching and learning in the classroom; and have a final presentation of their project to all staff. Educators will collaborate on professional development days and weekly meetings throughout the school year to identify, study, and implement job-embedded professional learning activities in a specific area to meet the needs of all our students. Some examples are: Equity in Education, Whole Child, Social and Emotional Learning, Literacy, Special Education, Content & Curriculum, English Language Learner instruction, classroom culture, and technology instruction. Noted: ALC serves a disproportionate number of students who are minorities, economically disadvantaged, and receive SpEd services. | $5,000.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Andrews Elementary | Getting Our Youngest Learners Outside on Our Campus & to the Community at Large | Getting Students Outdoors on campus and in the Community in Good Weather or Bad: This project seeks to get children into outdoor learning spaces at Andrews to explore, learn from and enjoy nature on a daily basis; to fund trips into the community at large where students can develop broader and deeper understanding of curricular studies-- with appropriate weather gear. Engaging in high interest outdoor activities, with the basic need of appropriate weather gear covered, children will enjoy increased social, emotional wellbeing. Focus will integrate Science, Social Studies, Health, Language Arts because in PK, all things are integrated. | $5,000.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Andrews Elementary | Diversifying Our Collection & Discovering Our Voices in Diverse Reads | Diversifying Our Collection & Discovering Our Voices in Diverse Reads will help the students of Andrews Elementary discover their voices reflected within age-appropriate, high-interest literature that meet the needs of our culturally and linguistically diverse students. With the availability of books based on characters similar to our students, their families, and cultures in our library, we can create a sense of belonging, an understanding of other cultures, and a love for literacy. | $5,000.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Austin ISD Department | Families As Partners: Outdoor Learning Champion | The Families as Partners Outdoor Learning Parent champion pilot is designed in collaboration with Westcave Outdoor Discovery Center LLC. to create the spaces and opportunities for Parent Champions within the 21 Families As Partners participating schools to engage the campus/community in conversations around outdoor learning spanning from the school to their community. This program would create a cohort of 10 parent champions from within the program that would lead this work across their campuses and then to the other 11 campuses. This is accomplished by targeted Professional Development for the Parent Champions surrounding 21st century skills that can facilitate a Two-generation approach that targets low-income children and parents from the same household, combining parent and child interventions to interrupt the cycle of poverty. | $10,000.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Austin ISD Department | Wellness Reconnection | The Wellness Reconnection project will address the anticipated challenges of the transition back to in-person learning for special education students who receive counseling on their individual education plans (IEPs). The project will promote reconnection by maximizing in-person sessions with creative, tactile and interactive activities to develop individual wellness kits and plans. The project also allows therapists to offer multi-sensory tools and mindfulness interventions that are fun and engaging for students to use during counseling sessions or to promote emotional regulation in the classroom. | $7,500.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Austin ISD Department | Academia Cuauhtli Summer Coding Camp+ teacher professional development | The Academia Cuauhtli-Aztech Kids Code camp is a project-based, culturally sustaining STEM program for second to sixth-grade students attending Academia Cuauhtli and Austin Independent School District. Through this program, students will learn the following: coding, video game design, digital monetization, and Danza Mexica. Additionally, we will be preparing AISD teachers and preservice teachers of color via professional development courses on how to implement culturally relevant and sustaining STEM pedagogies. | $5,000.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Bailey Middle School | Creating Equity for At-Home Life Skills Students with Learning Kits | Virtual learning has proved challenging for everyone involved but even more so for our special needs students. Creating equity among in-person and virtual learners has been a continual focus. Learning kits will provide the answer for how to level the field while we elevate our teaching game. | $429.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Barrington Elementary | The Mighty Mustang Store | The Mighty Mustang Store was designed and created as a positive incentive for students to obtain personal goals. | $5,000.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Bedichek Middle School | Creando Leaders: Una Experiencia for Student Voice and Choice | A creative way to empower our native, heritage, and world language Spanish speakers to have a voice and choice in their learning and campus outreach. This project will promote Spanish-speaking students across grade levels to collaborate and take leadership opportunities that will motivate class attendance and inspire passion projects. | $5,500.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Blackshear Elementary | Literacy to Life/Story Wranglers | Literacy to Life is a seven-week in-school residency in which third graders learn the foundations of creative writing through arts-integrated lessons designed to motivate students and improve their writing skills, confidence, creativity, and storytelling. During the residency, each classroom writes hundreds of stories as a class, in small groups, and in individual journals. At the end of the seven weeks, professional actors known as the Paramount Story Wranglers transform students? original stories from page to stage in a live performance for the entire campus! | $3,000.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Blazier Elementary | Stamped for Kids: A Book Study on Race and Racism in America | Through shared reading and/or novel studies with Stamped for Kids, three 5th Grade Classes will invite students to peer through the looking glass to learn about the history of race and racism in America. They will be challenged to hold up a magnifying glass to identify and examine racist policies in our country's history. Students will also be empowered to look into the mirror to locate themselves in the work of stamping out racist thoughts in their lives today. | $1,200.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Bowie High School | PROJECT BASED RESEARCH-Homeless Teens Assistance | This project will directly impact 20-30 homeless teens in Austin moving into state-funded apartments. These teens often struggle with a need for essential household items as they attempt to establish stability on their own for the first time. Project impact also extends to the 20-30 youth leaders from three different cohorts as they develop their SEL skill set. Post-project artifacts, including testimonials from the teen recipients, will be shared with the Bowie community at large via social media, class presentations, and a video archive. While this project was born in Bowie?s inaugural Project-Based Research course, it will undoubtedly reach far beyond one campus or one zip code. | $1,000.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Burnet Middle School | Burnet Community and School Learning Landscape | The Burnet Learning Landscape is a much anticipated redesign of an outdoor learning space that will serve the students, staff, and families of our Burnet Sailor Community. As a flexible outdoor space, we will be able to host campus activities, restorative practices, community meetings, staff wellbeing activities, and engaging outdoor learning. The Learning Landscape will directly support and build upon our current initiatives of Culturally Responsive Restorative Practices, SEL, and outdoor education in a space that is inviting, comfortable, and safe in light of Covid-19. We are proud of Burnet's multicultural and bilingual students and see this project as a space to come together as a community to celebrate our strengths. | $5,800.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Casey Elementary | Casey Edible Community Gardens | Casey's Community Edible Gardens have an extensive array of wholesome hergs and vegetables. We enjoy working and learning outside and creating edible beds that become part of our diet. We eat what we grow and invite our families to be part of this experience! | $2,000.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Casey Elementary | Outdoor Classroom Learning Kits for Casey Elementary | Casey Elementary will become part of the Austin ISD EcoRise Green School Cohort for the 2021 - 2022 school year and beyond. This project provides the materials needed for Outdoor Classroom Learning Kits and signage to create portable, safe and engaging outdoor learning spaces around our 18 acre campus. | $2,135.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Cook Elementary | Creating and Building a Positive SEL Culture in Our Cook Community | Cook Elementary will Create safe, supportive, and equitable learning environments that promote all students? social and emotional development by implementing the Inner Explorer and the Positivity Project Program. Cook Elementary teachers and staff will design opportunities to connect, heal, and build their capacity to support our students by providing a mindful space for our teachers to revitalize their positive energy. Teachers and students will learn mindfulness techniques as a tool to control stress and find balance in their daily lives. | $6,600.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Cook Elementary | Update Cook's 20-year-old Library Collection | Our school library collection is about 20 years old and in need of current and culturally diverse nonfiction and fiction. A refresh of its literature will provide a window of understanding for the community and a door of opportunity as it equips young and mature alike to embrace curiosity and creativity--all stabilized with a multicultural foundation. | $5,000.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Dawson Elementary | Self-Regulation and Restoration Through Community Gardening | We are creating a rain garden and community garden, a collaborative space for Dawson Elementary families and the larger Dawson community. This would be a space where Dawson students and community can regulate and restore through tending the garden and spending time in this restorative space. | $4,200.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Dobie Middle School | Dobie's Mindful Moment Room | As a campus on a journey to improve the way we support the social and emotional growth of our adolescent learners we are working to transform an office space into a Mindful Moment Room. This safe space will allow students to reconsider choices made and learn ways to regulate, relate, and reason through different mindfulness and sensory based activities. Additionally, it is our goal that students, staff, and families alike will find this space beneficial to meet their personal goals and improve their overall well-being. | $2,500.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Dobie Middle School | Operation Welcome Back | Operation Welcome Back will ensure that every student at our campus returns to a welcoming and positive environment. We hope to provide social events to prompt school spirit, parent and staff involvement for this upcoming school year. This grant can help our students receive equity and equality. | $5,000.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Galindo Elementary | Centering on Student growth. Growing and learning through play based centers. | Learning centers are one of the favorite parts of the day for kindergartens. They are also a great learning tool. Students have the opportunity to put into practice what they have learned. It is a moment where students take responsability for their own learning and make a huge progres. No matter if students work on more guided and academic material or more creative and problem solving activities - centers provide a time to practice time management skills, self regulation and exploring the student?s own interests. We believe we need diverse and high quality materials that will help students to connect to the school after the pandemic. | $4,000.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Galindo Elementary | Building Our Community:Using Literacy as Mirrors, Windows & Sliding Glass Doors | One of my goals as a teacher is to build students up as active community citizens. One of the best ways I can do that is through the books we read and analyze in class. This project will expand my classroom library, content used in shared reading, and literacy instruction tools. The expansion of such resources will focus on a diverse selection of books that will include a variety of genres and represent multiple cultures. Within these resources requested I have integrated text that is in spanish so that we can continue to promote biliteracy in our dual-language community. Representative art materials to be used in creative literacy lessons, and multimedia projects. | $2,352.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Garza Independence High School | Garza Coping Kits | The Garza Coping Kits project will provide coping kits containing a thoughtfully curated selection of items to classrooms, counselors? offices, and other public spaces on the Garza campus. Teachers and staff will be trained on how to guide students in the effective use of the coping kits to promote emotional regulation. Items in the coping kits will provide for sensory stimulation, self-soothing, and mindfulness practice. | $2,200.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Govalle Elementary | Printmaking for Positive Community Change | Govalle Elementary?s Art Department will spend the year teamed up with local printmaking project, Bibliographia, to deep dive into printmaking while students learn about the importance of print in communication, history, expression, and social justice. Students will process their connections to real world problems, brainstorm culturally relevant solutions, and create a body of work containing their supplications, concerns, insights and experiences. The finale to the program will be a culminating exhibition of published small books (zines), posters, and t-shirts to broadcast students? ideas for positive social change to the Eastside and broader Austin community. | $5,000.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Govalle Elementary | Powerful First Encounters: Hopes and Dreams Beginning of Year Conferences | This grant will fund the opportunity for teachers to engage in a book study of "Powerful Partnerships" by Karen Mapp, host one-on-one "Hopes and Dreams" conferences with parents and kids before the first day of school, and develop a model throughout the year of "Family Conferencing" to include students' input, rather than the traditional parent/teacher only conferences. | $7,900.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Guerrero Thompson Elementary | The Positivity Project at GT! | The funding will allow Guerrero Thompson Elementary teachers and staff to be equipped with digital resources, training, and strategies to teach positive psychology?s 24-character strengths and empower their students to build positive relationships through the implementation of The Positivity Project. | $4,900.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Guerrero Thompson Elementary | La lecciÛn de August - Novel set | The fourth grade classes at our school read the novel Wonder by R. J. Palacio, and I would like the Spanish Language Arts class to have a set of the novels so that each student can read along with the teacher. | $209.70 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Gullett Elementary | Yes We Can! An Unprecedented Opportunity to Improve Student Outcomes | The goal for this grant is to improve the academic success of all students by improving the professional practice of every adult and every team at Thomas A. Gullett Elementary. We must work to ensure that all students - including our students of color, children with special needs, children from poverty, children facing trauma, including those traumatized by the pandemic, and children with chronic absenteeism - learn at the highest levels despite low engagement this year. We will use professional learning communities and best practices to develop collaborative partnerships, close achievement gaps, and maximize learning for all. Our instructional leadership team will attend professional learning focused on using professional learning communities to address the achievement gaps that exist within our school's student groups. The leadership team will then guide the campus in using data to individualize instruction to help all students meet their individual learning goals. | $10,000.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | International High School | INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL STORE | This grant will allow us to purchase items to create a school store where students can use "school currency" to shop. Students will have the opportunity to earn IHS currency through classroom participation, consistent attendance, actions that improve the school community, and participation in extracurricular activities. In creating the school store, we hope to implement an additional means of incentivizing students to engage with school during the pandemic and provide them access to resources and luxuries they are not able to afford due to their socioeconomic backgrounds. | $9,844.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | LBJ Early College High School | The LBJ ECHS Business Center | The LBJ Early College High School Business Center (The CENTER) serves as a business and training center for students seeking employment and training skills; career exploration, resume development, vocational resources, civic engagement and community development. The Center provides a wide variety of trainings, hand-on activities and customized services for students. Including actual office stations, interactive classroom, and board/conference room. The Center's aim is to reengage students who were disconnected or less engaged because of the pandemic, while offering quality on campus career readiness services to all students on campus. The Center will serve as a source for young business minded individuals and future leaders. The goal of The CENTER is to enhance student engagement with our hard-to-reach and hard-to-serve population of students while offering services, increasing our network of partners and impact in the community. | $5,000.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Linder Elementary | Reading Woke: Creating a Diverse Books Program for Students | Reading Woke: Creating a Diverse Books Program for Students- The goal of this project is to diversify the Linder library to reflect all students while supporting students? social and emotional wellbeing is the goal of this project. When students see themselves and their families in books, they feel seen and acknowledged which builds their self esteem. By updating the Linder library with diverse, current books and reading nooks, we not only make reading relevant, we encourage families to sit together and read a book. | $5,000.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Linder Elementary | Linder Eagles S.T.R.E.A.M. Space for ALL! | Throughout the year, students will engage in a creative space to problem-solve and work as a team in the engineering design process. Students in 3rd-5th grade will lead and host coding and robotics camps for other classmates which will promote 21st Century Learners. Our portable maker-space will be accessible for all students and prepare students for Science, Robotics,Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics. | $5,340.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Lively Middle School | Developing Anti-Racist Youth through a Culturally Sustaining SEL Curriculum | Lively Middle School is committed to creating a culturally sustaining and anti-racist SEL curriculum for grades 6-8. In order to deepen students' development of racial literacy we would like to implement a book study during our SEL block on This book is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell. Students and teachers will engage in activities centered on identity and culture, making sense of the world, and taking action against racism through reading, discussing and journaling on themes throughout this text. | $7,700.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Lively Middle School | Lively Limitless Center | The Lively Limitless Center is a multipurpose area where students who are in need of services (social-emotional, grade recovery, credit recovery, attendance recovery) may go to get assistance with re-engaging with the expectations of school. The Limitless Center will replace the traditional ISS classroom, and be completely re-conceptualized as a high-tech space where students are assisted in whatever it is they need to be successful, from credit acceleration to engaging in a mindfulness task, to filling out career and college readiness information . A fulltime counselor, special education teacher and classified assistant will staff the center helping students with whatever their needs may be. The Limitless Center supports our vision of high expectations for all in inclusive, engaging environments where relationships form the heart of our work. Relying on research from trauma-informed schools responsive to students' needs, we seek to re-engage students in learning to meet their potential. | $5,000.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | McBee Elementary | Marking Milestones at McBee: The Birthday Book Program | Celebrate with books! The Birthday Book Program will celebrate each of our students on their birthday while simultaneously reinforcing literacy and building home libraries. Each student will receive a new wrapped book of choice for their birthday. They will take a birthday photo and receive a printed copy to keep, as well as receive a birthday card from the community. If students have a new baby in their family, they may also choose a board book to take home as a baby present. | $5,000.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Mendez Middle School | Mendez Student Media Project | The Mendez Student Media (MSM) Project is designed to build student community and provide opportunities for students to express themselves while learning communication skills and media technologies. Isolation was a serious problem during the pandemic. Ultimately, students received individual computers, which helped, but students need to learn new ways to utilize their new technology. The MSM project will provide equipment to develop a Media Studio that includes equipment to support podcasting, internet radio, and the development of YouTube style videos to enhance the projects that students develop as part of their Project-based Learning Curriculum. | $5,000.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Mendez Middle School | Sensory Room/Flexible Seating for SPED classrooms | Consuelo Mendez Middle School has the highest percentage of special education students in Austin ISD for comprehensive schools that do not target special needs children. To better meet the needs of the special education students, we want to create a sensory room that provides a safe space for students to learn how to self-regulate, practice antecedent strategies, and as-needed interventions for their social/emotional health. We would like this space to offer choices to the students on how they would like to practice their learned strategies by providing flexible seating, mindfulness activities, and other research-based interventions. We would like to generalize these strategies to our classrooms as well, so that students can take the initiative on advocating for their needs while in our structured classroom environments. | $3,600.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Navarro Early College High School | Bodily Consent for All | This project aims to engage students at the elementary, middle, and high school levels of the Navarro vertical team in lessons and discussions about bodily consent-- using the graphic novel, Consent (for Kids!): Boundaries, Respect, and Being in Charge of YOU by Rachel Brian, as our foundation and springboard. Our goals are to connect the community, promote self & social awareness, empower students, and decrease the number of teen pregnancies. This project will include collaborations between departments, across campuses, and amongst students from various grade levels and language backgrounds as they create public service announcements to share with wider audiences. | $2,000.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Navarro Early College High School | Pride Week Celebration and Navarro Cultural Carnival | The Navarro Cultural Carnival & Pride Week Celebration is tentatively scheduled for April 2022, is a nod to the Caribbean-style "carnival" which is a celebration of culture. Navarro Business program is inviting approximatesly 30 schools to form "troupes", or groups, that will collaborate and create costumes to show off their school pride. Ultimately, all school troupes will come together to "play masquerade" in April 2022. This will be a celebration of school pride while exploring the rich community culture with friends and family. | $5,000.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Northeast Early College High School | Operation ReConnect 4: Students, Parents, Staff, and Community Partners | This project will help reengage our students, their families, staff, and community partners as we head into the 2021-2022 school year, and beyond. By rebranding our school and hosting three engaging events; a back to school pep rally in August, game night/meet the teacher carnival in September, and a Dia De Los Muertos Trunk-or-Treat in October, we hope to breathe new life into our campus community. The events will be designed to strengthen our relationships with our community, improve attendance, boost staff morale, parent involvement, and facilitate a fun, vibrant, and welcoming campus culture. | $7,100.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Oak Springs Elementary | D.R.I.P. - Dolphins Reaching Infinite Potential | DRIP will provide enrichment learning opportunities that break economic barriers and extend the classroom learning experience. Students will engage in 6-week self-selected learning sessions (i.e. STEM, health/wellness, fine arts, career/college readiness) that will promote student agency, while developing the whole child. | $5,000.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Odom Elementary | The Nest | We would like to create a closet on campus to assist and educate students & families with items like deodorant, sanitary pads, shampoo etc. Students and families could come to "The Nest" to get basic needs items. | $5,000.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Odom Elementary | Playing to Heal | The Imagination Playground will give students an opportunity for interactive play, help students socialize, and provides opportunities for cooperation, problem-solving, and creative thinking. | $5,400.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Overton Elementary | STEM Space for All | Our school community is excited and getting ready to welcome all scholars back to campus this fall. We want to create a STEM/Maker Space lab as a space for students to collaborate on project-based learning challenges, perform experiments to demonstrate interests and understanding, and tinker and make models, robotics and more. This space will be open to all- K-5 scholars and teachers, counselor, librarians, coaches, tutors and mentors to have a "brave space" to use engaging materials and see cross-curricular connections and socio-emotional growth that focuses on a growth mindset. | $4,900.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Padron Elementary | Microgreen Farming: Teaching through Alternative Methods Science and Health | Microgreen farming focuses on teaching science based knowledge and skills, such as plant cycle , seed sprouting, and alternative methods of indoor farming as well as health practices; in particular the importance of eating fresh produce and greens. The method by which microgreens are planted allow students with special needs to have a hands-on experience while planting, growing, and observing for data collection purposes in an inclusive environment in which their language and developmental needs are met with instructional accommodations and supports. This project supports the elements of early childhood education in which a student is provided with a hands-on approach for creating environmental understanding of the physical and modern world in which they are active participants. The component of developing this project in a special education classroom in to engage and advocate for any child's inclusiveness and participation regarding of their present abilities or accommodation needs. | $500.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Patton Elementary | The Collaborative, Inclusive, Adaptive Program, C.I.A. | The Collaborative, Inclusive, and Adaptive program, or C.I.A, is designed to create an immersive classroom that promotes self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness through educating students in their needs and the resources they can use to maximize their educational experience. This program targets the needs of students receiving mainstream and special education services to promote equity in access to an inclusive academic environment. | $7,100.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Pickle Elementary | Restorative Mindfulness Room & Book Study | Our project has two parts. One is the creation of a Restorative Mindfulness Room to promote mindfulness, self-care, and community building that would serve both students and staff. The second part is a staff book study on the book, Courageous Conversations about Race, by Glenn Singleton. | $7,400.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Pickle Elementary | Math Club | Math Club provides high ability/high interest math students in grades 3-5 at Pickle Elementary, a Title 1 school, additional access to enrichment opportunities. The project aspires to give the students 1- 3 years of weekly engagement with math topics and activities that prepare the students for gifted and talented assessments, advanced level math classes in middle school, and magnet school participation. As opposed to traditional math classes, Math club aims to provide students the opportunity to learn about the history of math, its framers, base systems, inferential thinking, mental math, pre-algebra, and to be academic risk takers. Students are meant to find math club novel and rigorous at first, but to come to embrace productive struggle, develop a deep love for math, and to look forward to every math club session! | $4,500.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Pillow Elementary | Regulation Tools | The goal of the project is to teach students strategies to self-regulate so that they can manage their emotions in any environment whether it is at school, home or the community. Students can also teach each other strategies that work for them. Also, to help ease the difficulties of teaching dysregulated students and give them self-regulation tools, so they can engage in learning successfully. Teachers at Pillow Elementary will have regulation materials available for check-out that their students can use in their classrooms peace areas and for flexible seating options, so students can use the materials/equipment to practice/learn self-regulation skills and can engage in learning successfully. | $10,000.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Ridgetop Elementary | Ridgetop Reads/Ridgetop Lee | The campus wide dual language effort ?Ridgetop Lee/Ridgetop Reads? will strengthen the campus community through a monthly school read that connects to multiple campus initiatives including dual language, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and the Creative Learning Initiative (CLI. This initiative will support our students as biliterate and bicultural learners who are able to achieve at high levels in both Spanish and English. The diverse books chosen for this project will drive collaboration between the librarian, teachers, parents, and support staff working to develop biliterate, multicultural students in the diverse setting of Ridgetop Elementary, where approximately 50% of students are Latino and 20% are English language learners. | $5,300.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Small Middle School | 6th Grade Peace Corner Clint Small Middle School | After the COVID-19 pandemic, it is more important than ever that, as educators, we create spaces that help to heal the trauma that our communities suffered in the past year. The goal of this project is to create a peace corner that the 6th graders of Clint Small Middle School may use for regulating their emotions. This peace corner will include guinea pigs that the students will help to care for during school hours, simultaneously developing empathy and executive functioning skills. Once students have regulated their emotions using this peace corner, they will be able to relate with peers and teachers and learn content more effectively. | $400.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Small Middle School | If You Build It-STEM Tools For The Classroom | Power tools in the hands of middle schoolers might sound crazy, but offering students the opportunity to physically construct representations of their learning is a powerful tool. Students will use motosaws, cardboard cutters and glue guns to bring their ideas to life-authentically increasing collaboration, problem solving, and communication skills. After spending the last year staring at a screen, our goal is to increase engagement and real world interaction with other students in a safe and supportive environment. | $2,500.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Small Middle School | Brain Breaks, Social Engagement and Body Movement | This project will provide sports equipment for each classroom teacher to allow students frequent breaks throughout the day. Our teachers know the benefits movement and social interaction have on a student's success and want to encourage students to move, play, and interact with one another during the school day. This equipment will allow all classrooms to have standard equipment to encourage outdoor breaks, socialization and movement-things that these students need after the last school year. | $2,700.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | St. Elmo Elementary | Mighty Mustang Outdoor Learning Classroom | We are seeking funds to help design, create, facilitate, and maintain an outdoor classroom located in the area where a portable is scheduled to be demolished. Like many children across the city, state, and country, many of our students have felt less connected to their peers, their school communities, and to learning in general due to the restrictive conditions forced upon us by the global pandemic. This outdoor learning classroom will offer a hands-on, real-world-based learning experience for our community and show that the destruction of the old (portable) can give rise to something new and beautiful (outdoor classroom). | $7,500.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Travis Early College High School | Migration Stories: Cross-Curricular Re-Engagement through Storybook Creation | All 9th grade students at Travis Early College High school will read and analyze a children?s book and other texts about migration in their English and World/Human Geography classes, focusing on concepts such as author?s purpose/craft and organizational structures in English classes and on concepts such as the push/pull factors that influence migration in their Geography classes. They will then collaborate with professional Teaching Artists from Creative Action to write and illustrate their own original children?s books on the topic of migration. Finally, Travis ECHS and Creative Action staff will collaborate to have the books printed, bound, and shared with elementary/middle school students and schools in the Travis ECHS vertical team. | $9,000.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Travis Heights Elementary | Early Childhood Literacy Lab | Our mission is to provide our diverse population of students with reading instruction in an immersive and developmentally appropriate environment that provides experiences that will improve oral and written literacy skills. By focusing on developing students' oral language, we will meet the district's goal of students reading on grade level by the third grade. The Literacy Lab is a classroom where teachers will use research based strategies to teach oracy, the foundation of reading and writing, to our youngest English and Spanish Language Learners. This will be the first Literacy Lab in Austin, modeled after the Rice University OWL (Oral Written Language) Lab in Houston, our Literacy Lab will provide a safe space for students to take risks with their language development and encourage meaningful interactions between students and teachers by providing time to build the critical bridge between early language and the more mature language of reading and writing. | $7,500.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Uphaus Early Childhood Center | Communication for All Students Is Key! | A permanent communication board installed on our main playground would use pictures, symbols, and words to help students with limited language express their needs and thoughts to others. Communication boards are a great way to not only increase vocabulary but to meet physical and emotional needs while promoting positive social interactions. Students can point to the pictures to express how they are feeling, make choices, or even ask a friend to play, and adults can also use communication boards to model language by pointing to and pairing the pictures with the words as they talk! | $1,480.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Walnut Creek Elementary | The ArcoIris Project | The ArcoIris Project is a student led collaborative initiative between a GT/Student Council Committee, the library, and our Head Custodian, Iris Ramirez Hernandez. We will found a Student Council who will be charged with creating and facilitating proposals to improve campus culture. Our first few guided projects will include designing and building a community food pantry, beautifying the campus through murals, and creating sustainable outdoor housing and a food plan for our two sewer cats. After the guided projects, students will submit their own ideas to the council and then to the principal and their projects will be planned, proposed, organized, and executed by the Student Council and Student Body. | $10,000.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Webb Middle School | Never Alone. We got you! | I would like to have a number of gift cards to reward each student several times throughout the year for all the hard work they do. All students have gifts that they bring into the classroom family. Rewards, such as gift cards, can be very useful to our ELDA families. | $5,000.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Widen Elementary | Dry Erase Tables | This project will focus on providing whiteboard tables for student engagement during math. | $1,920.00 | Engaging students during the pandemic |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Winn Elementary | We are all Wildcats! | We are all Wildcats will be a joint effort between Winn Elementary and Webb Middle school to provide a bridge for 5th to 6th grade transition. Webb is the feeder MS for Winn and we want to increase enrollment at Webb and reduce our loss to charter schools in the area. There are several ways we hope to achieve this goal. One is by increasing correspondence between Winn and Webb and providing opportunities for families to become more familiar with the programs offered at Webb. We want to incorporate a PALS program and a reading buddy program. We would like to work together to help our students choose Webb. | $7,500.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2021 Special Grant Program | Wooldridge Elementary | Build Us Up: Resilience Through Positivity and Self-Regulation | Wooldridge Elementary embarks on improving the social and emotional health of our students and staff by focusing daily on positive strengths, positive relationships and positive interactions through the Positivity Project and self-regulation via Calming Corners & Calming Kits. Building students up socially and emotionally will prepare students for academic and personal success. Help bring this program to our school. | $4,200.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Allison Elementary | Space Center Houston Visit for 5th grade students | This project involves our 5th grade students trip to Space Center in Houston, TX will serve as culmination trip for their participation in our Science Technology Engineering Art and Math (STEAM) program, Robotics program and Advanced Via Individual Determination (AVID) program. They will soon be moving on to Martin Middle School and then in a few years to our Eastside Memorial High School which also provide Innovation Academies that support STEAM and AVID initiatives. Allison Elementary is committed to support these initiatives as a part of the East Side vertical team and promote student engagement in these type of career options. | $5,100.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Blazier Elementary | Kindergarten Play | Kindergarten is focused so much on academics nowadays that it leaves very little time for play and building fine motor skills. I think it is important and doable to incorporate fun into learning and making students look forward to school every day. | $1,550.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Burnet Middle School | Mariachi Program boost | Burnet Middle School is trying to start and build a mariachi program. For this to be possible, we need all the help we can get to purchase instruments, instrument accessories, and Mariachi trajes for our students to perform. As of the 2019-2020 school year, Burnet has 89.0% Hispanic students. We strongly believe that bringing a Mariachi program will be a rewarding experience for students and their families in this community. | $6,667.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Eastside Early College High School | Native Garden PBL | Students will participate in a PBL that culminates with them building a native garden on campus. Students will: 1) Test the soil around campus 2) Research native plants 3) Design a garden for our campus 4) Present their research and design to a panel consisting of district personnel and other experts 5) Build their garden. This project will help increase the biodiversity on our campus, which is important for our Green Flag (NWF) status, as well as address multiple environmental systems TEKS. Additionally, the students will learn various skills through their research, design, panel presentations, and building that are essential to their future success. | $2,500.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Galindo Elementary | SEL Mentor Texts for Dual Language 2nd Graders | This project will be focused on providing accessible, engaging and SEL and growth-mindset-focused read aloud books in BOTH English and Spanish to make SEL concepts more tangible for ELLS. This project will be implemented in a South Austin, Title 1 campus within a dual language classroom. | $475.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Galindo Elementary | 5th Grade Galindo Grizzlies Reach for the Stars and Beyond at NASA | This project aims to provide an enriching learning experience for 5th grade students at Galindo Elementary to visit the NASA Space Center in Houston, Texas. Our campus is focused on providing a wealth of STEM/ STEAM-based activities for our students as we launched our Green and Global initiatives. By providing our students with a wide range of activities, we aim to expand their perspectives to consider a future in STEM/ STEAM. | $5,700.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Jordan Elementary | Public Art Murals at Barbara Jordan Elementary | Barbara Jordan Elementary seeks to break down the existing barriers present to our students? exposure to art by creating two murals on the exterior of our school. The murals will be painted by professional artists in partnership with local mural collective SprATX Ignite, providing a public art space for our entire community to enjoy while increasing student access to potential careers in art. | $6,000.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Linder Elementary | LINDER ROBOTICS Soaring to NEW HEIGHTS | hroughout the year, students at Dorothy Linder Elementary will lead and host robotics camps for other classmates which will promote 21st Century Learners. In the spring, students will compete in the First Lego League Robotics Competition. At Linder, the amount of opportunities are limited due to resources and specific circumstances. Currently, we are using LEGO NXT models with out-of-date software which limits our programming. We currently serve 4th and 5th graders. As a campus, we want to take our Robotics team to the next level. In addition, with the appropriate tools, we want to welcome and help navigate Brooke Elementary students through the school changes process and enhance extra-curricular activities in and out of the classroom. We are aware that several students participate in Robotics at Brooke, and we are looking forward to strengthening our program and making the transition as welcoming as possible for ALL students. | $4,900.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Northeast Early College High School | Autonomous Vehicles in Flint, Michigan! | Northeast Robotics has been invited to compete in Square One?s Autonomous Innovative Vehicle Design (AIVD) competition come May! All their hard work will be shown off at Kettering University in Flint, Michigan -- fighting for a spot in the top 3 in order to advance to the national competition in Los Angeles, California. | $5,000.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Odom Elementary | Off to College | As an AVID campus, we want to increase our students exposure to various college opportunities that exist in and out of the Austin Area. | $3,000.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Paredes Middle School | Closing the Gap through Music Education- UT Longhorn Music Camp Band Scholarship | The Paredes Band program will provide its top performing students with an authentic post-secondary experience by sending them to the Longhorn Music Camp at the University of Texas in Austin. Recipients of the Puma Pride Scholarship will be able to experience the life of a college music student, performing alongside band students from across the state. | $3,475.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Sanchez Elementary | Break the Summer Reading Slide | The goal of this project is to break or interrupt the Summer Reading Slide among the Kindergarten, 1st & 2nd graders at Sanchez Elementary. Currently 90% of the student population enrolled is of low socio economic status. This project aims to provide access to appealing reading material for our students by sending them home for the Summer with a collection of books and materials for use during the summer. Teachers will work with students to model how to select one book per week, engage in multiple readings of the book along with engaging reader response activities. Students will receive reminders over the phone throughout the Summer months to help them stay on track with their reading. The intent is to minimize the drop in reading proficiency levels among Primary grades students over the Summer months. | $2,500.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Travis Heights Elementary | Crowes Nest Farm Field Trip | A Crowe's Nest Farm field trip is a great way to bring science to life for our young students. At the farm, students can experience standards based, hands-on science with knowledgeable educators and engaging experiences that cannot be accessed in the classroom. These experiences are essential to helping our young learners make connections to the real world and to gain English vocabulary skills. It will also allow for student engagement in the sciences. | $820.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Uphaus Early Childhood Center | And The Winner Is . . .! | Award-winning books at both the state and national levels were announced in January of 2020. While Uphaus was able to purchase some of the nominated stories with Title I funds, this grant would make it possible for us to purchase more of these books for our school library. Having recently published, high-quality literature will keep our collection up-to-date, appealing, diverse, and inclusive for all of our students, staff, and families. | $450.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2020 Student Opportunity Fund | Wooten Elementary | Falling in Love with STEM through Real World Experiences | Our 4th graders will go on two different field trips to apply hands-on STEM learning at Lego Land in San Antonio and GattiTown in Austin. They will get to learn about real-world STEM concepts through the activities provided at Lego Land and GattiTown. | $2,465.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Akins Early College High School | Analysis of Enzymes through the Release of Glowing or Colored Products | In this project, the students will analyze the kinetic behavior of enzymes based on pH, temperature, concentration of the enzyme and substrate, and competitive inhibition. The inquiry based-investigations will be done using non-colored substrates that will release a colored or fluorescent product when they are exposed to an enzyme. The analysis will be semi-quantitative and quantitative. The semi-quantitative analysis will be done via the degree of intensity of fluorescence released by a fluorescent product. The quantitative analysis will be done via absorbance of the colored product by colorimetry. In both type of analysis, students will prepare a set of standard solutions of known concentration. The analysis and investigation of the kinetic of enzymes will lead the students to explore important applications in the biomedical field as well as in the biofuel and fermentation industries. | $2,440.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Akins Early College High School | Eagle Care: Student Health and Wellness Support | A partnership between the Social Work (Human Services) Internship and the Student Support Services Office to provide peer mentoring and small self-care, health & wellness kits to students suffering from the mental/emotional stress of the current school environment. | $10,000.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Akins Early College High School | Your History, Your People | Your History, Your People is a podcast class that allows students the opportunity to research minority leaders in their community and produce a show about their fight and contributions that changed systems at the local and state level. The rationale behind this project is to balance out the marginalized, traumatic histories of minorities in our U.S. History classes and replace it with a deeper knowledge of our students' own history told by their own people so that they learn that they are not victims of history, but makers of history. This is an incredible time to archive stories from 2020, focusing on local heroes who fought to change the system. | $10,000.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Alternative Learning Center | AlC Virtual & Onsite Retreats (CAMPUS-WIDE) | The AlC Virtual and Onsite Retreats (CAMPUS-WIDE) project is an effort to promote a holistic approach to coping, healing, and restoration for ALC scholars, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project promotes social and emotional learning (SEL), literacy, and also addresses student and staff creativity and overall wellness. The project utilizes staff-student facilitator teams. | $8,122.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Alternative Learning Center | Exploring STEM Anywhere | Students will have access to high quality materials for rigorous and engaging lessons that can be done virtually or in an in person setting. These materials will be considered consumable and based on the length of stay the student has been given on our campus they may benefit from more than 1 kit. | $2,500.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Andrews Elementary | Personal Peace Areas in a Box | Fanny Mae Andrews Elementary continues to support SEL opportunities for students during this time of social distancing. Once face to face instruction is implemented, each child will receive a Personal Peace Area in a Box so that they may have their calming activities at their fingertips and limit contact between students and staff. | $5,000.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders | At-Home STEAM Education with Micro:Bits | At the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, every 7th grade student takes a year-long STEM class. One of the overarching goals of this class is to sustain interest and enthusiasm for STEM related fields which often starts to decline in girls this age. The curriculum includes learning the fundamentals of computational thinking which lays the groundwork for successful matriculation in future computer science and/or engineering classes. This year, we hope to provide each 7th grade student with a Micro:bit microcontroller to be used in their STEM class. These powerful little programmable devices have several built-in sensors including light, temperature, accelerometer, LED, and bluetooth capabilities. Students can use these functions in a wide variety of computational and creative design applications including science experiments, engineering challenges, and data collection and analysis. Micro:bit microcontrollers also allow students to collaborate and communicate with their peers while still maintaining social distancing. | $2,500.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Austin High School | Austin High Athletics Restorative Justice & Racial Reconciliation Training | Austin High Athletics Restorative Justice & Racial Reconciliation Training | $4,700.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Austin ISD Department | Read Across AISD: StoryWalkÆ Style! | Austin ISD librarians aim to bring the literary phenomenon, StoryWalkÆ, to school grounds across our city. Readers will exercise, enrich their minds, and engage with literature as they enjoy picture books outside, walking from page to page. Thirty different StoryWalkÆ installations will rotate among participating campuses over the next school year, promoting literacy, community engagement, exercise, and social-emotional health among our citizenry. Librarians will collaborate to create, promote, share, and safely swap StoryWalksÆ and accompanying literacy-based activities. | $8,848.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Austin ISD Department | Courageous Conversation Academy for Families: Travis Vertical Team | As the Parent and Community Group for the AISD Race Equity Council, we plan to create access to a customized Courageous Conversations Academy workshop, specific to families of the Travis High School vertical team, to develop the same set of tools that teachers, administrators and other school staff are learning that are aligned to the Cultural Proficiency and Inclusiveness professional learning initiatives in Austin ISD. This opportunity will be foundational for an on-going commitment to build racial equity and consciousness, and cross-cultural connections within our school communities to ultimately engage and support our students' success. | $10,000.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Becker Elementary | Decolonizing Becker Classrooms through Literature and Community Engagement | One of the missions at our campus is to help our community develop as active participants in social justice, anti-racism, and inclusivity for ALL. This project will support our ongoing integration of Culturally Responsive Restorative Practices (CRRP) to create an identity affirming school culture and further develop our welcoming community. We will focus on decolonizing the classroom through staff training and a teacher/family book study of Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds, while supporting students? social-emotional learning though diverse and anti-racist digital literature. | $4,986.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Bedichek Middle School | Time for Building: Relationships, Engagement, & a Culturally Relevant Library | This project seeks to build a number of important aspects of my students? classroom experience during the 2020-2021 school year. Through engaging access to engaging hip hop-based instructional videos, culturally-relevant books to be used as mentor texts in various genres and in our classroom library, and materials to build relationships with students as the school year starts digitally, this project will help students have a positive experience in ELA. | $945.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Bedichek Middle School | Stands for Students | I would like to purchase music stands for all of my orchestra students for home practice. Since the COVID-19 pandemic I have seen many of my students looking at music on the floor or their bed, making their instrument posture and technique less than desirable. My students do not have means to rent their own instruments so also do not have means to purchase music stands. | $2,500.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Blackshear Elementary | Scholastic Access For Every Learner, Every Level, Any Distance | I would like to provide my students with scholastic magazines that are printed and offered virtually. These magazines would cover innovative science content, culturally responsive content for kids, and stories ignite a sense of wonder in both fiction and non-fiction. This will meet the literacy needs of students at any level and any distance. | $2,422.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Blazier Elementary | Read-At-Home Literacy Set | Read-At-Home Books Levels K-Q is a collection of leveled reading sets created to support students in second through the end of fourth grade, using the Guided Reading chart. Each of the 7 levels includes 12 sturdy books and easy-to-follow lesson routines, ideal for the classroom, the home, or the hybrid learning environment. | $430.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Blazier Elementary | Can You Hear Me Now? | This project will fund 180 pairs of headphones with noise cancelling microphones to help our 5th Graders focus and be more engaged and participatory in distance learning. | $2,917.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Blazier Elementary | Civics: Preparing for the 2020 Election | This project would give our 180 Fifth Graders each a copy of Scholastic's Election Skills Book, as well as access to Scholastic's Election 2020 website with news articles, kid reporters, and other content. These resources will be used in-person or remotely to help us talk about and explore the voting system and democracy. This will be part of a larger unit that will enable students to feel empowered to challenge and change unjust systems and to be motivated to vote in the future and make their voices heard. | $585.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Blazier Elementary | Kinder Care No Matter Where | Blazier?s Kinder Bilingual team is asking for funds to help our students have the maximum kinder experience. During this global pandemic, everything is very unpredictable about the future of education. We need to be prepared, and would like to provide students with materials they would normally have access in the classroom, at home. | $5,613.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Blazier Elementary | Novels to close the "Distance" in Distance Learning | This project will provide three novels to each of our 180 Fifth Graders that students will have at home during distance learning. Through daily shared reading via Zoom and whole-class novel units, our students will build reading fluency and comprehension while connecting with engaging texts that build their love of reading. Students having copies of the books will help our teachers to maintain our sacred daily read-aloud despite the challenges inherent in distance learning. | $3,211.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Blazier Elementary | Learning Together While We Are Apart | We want to provide our Blazier Kindergarten students with tools and resources as a supplement to online learning. By creating three different learning toolkits for each student in the areas of Reading, Math, and Fine Motor, we are enabling our young learners to have a hands-on experience that they would traditionally have access to in the classroom. These kits will serve as individual learning bins once we return to face to face instruction. | $5,040.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Boone Elementary | PreK Learning Kit | Our project provides PreK students with much needed materials to facilitate project based at home learning that encompasses the whole child. Our boxes will help students focus on social emotional and mental wellbeing, hands on learning projects, and STEAM activities. These material boxes will be able to travel with students back to campus to further ensure safety once in person learning resumes. | $2,720.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Bowie High School | Student SEL Micro-Grants | The ?Micro-Grant? program at Bowie High School will cover the cost of small gifts for students from teachers, which build and support teacher/student relationships. The confidential micro-grants will provide immediate funding so that teachers don?t have reach into their own pockets (as they do so often), and it will offer these opportunities for teachers who are struggling financially. | $2,400.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Brown Elementary | Brown Virtual Back-to-School Family Informational Game and Student School b | The Brown Family Informational Night & Student Supply Distribution impacts all of our students and their families. Throughout the year we will host virtual Family Informational Game meetings where students and their families can login to hear a welcome message from the Principal and an announcement regarding dates and times of students' supply box distribution, and followed by a breakout session to play an IceBreaker game to get acquainted, and a question and answer session with students' class teachers, parent liaisons, and interpreters for all languages. Parents will hear more about the upcoming school year, including schedules and more. At the close of the breakout sessions, the whole school will regroup to share about their experiences during the evening. . This will help build community through engagement and establish a regular forum for direct communication. | $9,941.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Burnet Middle School | Parental Empowerment Project | The system is failing meeting the needs of underserved students because of systemic racism and discrimination in funding. Accessing the web does not mean computer literacy. Both affect underprivileged minorities. This lack includes the inability to perform simple functions. Being digitally savvy is urgent. We demand to invest in technology that links the school and home learning environments to support children?s learning. Burnet?s Parental Empowerment Program will develop parents technology leaders who will help other parents to be digitally prepared. It is the time to build upon the demonstrations and lessons of the past and develop a progressive agenda that can strengthen parents? involvement in their children?s lives through the effective deployment of technology. The PEP program is based on powerful new trends such as meaningful technology training and ongoing technical support for parents, that will lead them to support their children?s education, and get opportunities for all of them. | $9,954.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Casey Elementary | Kinder Anywhere | The goal of Kinder Anywhere is to allow students to safely access hands-on activities whether in the classroom during in-person learning or at home during remote learning. | $5,100.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Clifton Career Development School | Clifton Connection Kits | With school starting virtually, Clifton will safely make contact with our students and their families via our Connection Kits. The kits will get students started with art and other classroom supplies that will save them a trip to the store and give them hands-on equipment for creative SEL and content instruction activities our teachers will present online or in the classroom. These Connection Kits can be a way to reach out with a positive connection from the very beginning; making our presence in their child's educational experience more tangible. | $6,010.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Cook Elementary | Be Safe & Keep Moving | Be Safe & Keep Moving provides activities and lessons for children to be healthy emotionally, physically, socially, and cognitively at school & home. | $10,000.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Crockett Early College High School | Diversity in Antiquity Initiative at CECHS | My project focuses on providing CECHS Latin students with inclusive, relatable, and accessible course content using Suburani textbooks and online resources. Suburani materials present the ancient Roman world in all of its multicultural diversity and offer students a more accurate and nuanced view of life in antiquity. Students will use this text to develop their cultural understanding of both the ancient world and our own. | $2,449.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Dawson Elementary | Growing Superheroes: Therapeutic mindfulness, arts integration & gardening | We believe our students are superheroes - facing unforeseen challenges with the mission to share their unique talents with our community. Join us in our initiative to grow our superhero community as we recognize the genius in every child and launch a mindfulness mission by integrating an art socio-emotional curriculum with a school ?Superhero Garden?. With AISD?s mission to service the whole-child, we believe socio-emotional learning interventions with mindfulness, gardening, and art integration are a powerful trifecta for our students? and school community?s success. Let?s be the change for our students? growth by creating brave, engaging and nurturing spaces together with an edible learning garden, trauma-informed arts integration and mindfulness spaces in our classroom & school. | $2,500.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Dobie Middle School | Dobie Community Connection | We found through our attempt to reach out to families during the first stages of quarantine that parents preferred communication specifically through text messaging allowing them to process the information to preferred language through an app translator or family member. A campus app with language choices gives easy phone accessibility so that families can stay connected to their students' education without needing a second laptop or extensive technology literacy.The application will serve as a hub for all resources available on campus and announcements from staff and teachers that would typically have to be promoted individually by the source through different communication tools. | $9,760.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Eastside Early College High School | Individual Lab/Project Kits for Eastside Science Classes | The science department would like to create lab and project kits that could be distributed to individual students to use either at school or at home. This would allow us to plan exciting content while still adhering to all social distancing and distance learning guidelines. | $10,000.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Galindo Elementary | Learning to think in my language and in another language | I want to support my students in learning English and their native language, their culture and other cultures. My goal is to make an impact in their lives and provide books and materials that will broaden their minds and improve their literacy skills. | $2,500.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Galindo Elementary | Restoring Community Through Trauma-Informed Relationships | This project will focus on providing professional development in the area of trauma-informed practices to all staff. As educators we have a duty to keep ourselves informed on being responsive and supportive for students with trauma. This project will be implemented in a south-central Austin Title I school that serves a diverse population of students. | $2,076.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Garza Independence High School | Bold Educators United | Garza Independence High School seeks to contract an expert on anti-racism to facilitate quality training for staff. Staff will apply fresh knowledge from the training to transform school culture by creating anti-racist classrooms via newly created curriculum, enhancing student and staff interactions, and integrating anti-racist practices to school-wide No Place for Hate initiatives. Together, we will create a community of anti-racism and foster unity among staff and students. | $10,000.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Govalle Elementary | Literacy BOOST via Distance | Purchase of at-home kits for students to use during small group and individual dyslexia interventions. This will allow students to utilize a multi-sensory approach to better understand the science of reading. | $1,650.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Graham Elementary | Drawing Messages of Hope | Imagining students driving up to the front of the school to pick up their sketchbooks, I am instantly smiling. In class, we have discussed the importance of a sketchbook for any artist, from the masters to the novice. With this supply students become the artist, illustrator, writer, and editor of their story. We can draw together, creating images where we rethink the ordinary, celebrate the unexpected, and relish the time together. | $2,500.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Graham Elementary | Individual Music Packs | Due to Covid and online learning, I want my students to have their own music packet so they will be safe as well as being able to participate from home. I can safely get their packets to them which include different items according to grade level. Examples include rhythm cards, melodic cards, egg shakers, scrapers, wooden sticks, xylophone charts. This would allow the classes to not share instruments cutting down on germs as well as getting students more engaged at home. | $2,300.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Guerrero Thompson Elementary | Individual Materials for Success | As we approach the new school year with new strategies, I would love to be able to provide my students with individual materials that support our hands on learning approach pertaining to math and science. By being able to provide individual materials, I can foster a sense of responsibility and enhance the safety of my students during COVID. As we approach guidelines that require us to distance, it is important that students still have access to resources without endangering their health. | $187.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Harris Elementary | Read Alouds at Home Together | As we start our classes with virtual learning, I want my students to still be able to experience literacy in their hands, not just through a screen. Students benefit when they follow along in a book during read alouds. My project is providing students with a couple of books + supplies to ensure their read aloud experiences during virtual learning is almost as good as the real thing. | $1,420.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Houston Elementary | Virtual Math Coaching | As a math instructional coach, I work with small groups of students. During virtual learning at home, it was extremely difficult to model our math strategies for my students then holding my work up to my camera for them to see and ask questions. I did eventually use my phone and cans of food to construct a makeshift document camera that intermittently worked for the last weeks of virtual learning. | $700.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | International High School | International Wellness Institute @ International High School | With this grant, we aim to transform our campus into an "International Wellness Institute," (IWI) by promoting whole-community social and emotional wellness through yoga, dance, fitness and meditation classes open to students, family and staff. This institute will be paired with innovative training on racial literacy and SEL, alongside a monthly staff book club that will help staff to better understand the physical manifestations of traumas commonly seen in our school population. With these components combined, we seek to improve staff-student relations as well as our ability to function as a racially literate institution in contemporary society. | $6,518.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Joslin Elementary | Thinking "inside" The Box | Our Life Skills and PPCD/ECSE students are struggling when asked to learn in this new " out of the box" type of schooling. Due to health issues some will not be joing for a bit. My hope is to make Learning Boxes with sensory needs for the children to have at home to meet THEIR needs . It is time to think "inside the box" and bring learning to their fingertips. | $603.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Joslin Elementary | Read to Succeed! | Joslin Elementary is a campus that is currently on a Target Improvement Plan (TIP). We would like to provide students with a strong reading foundation in the primary level (grades PreK-4, Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd) that can be delivered remotely, in-person or via a blended model. What we currently use in these primary grades has not been systematically implemented and it is not vertically aligned. Some materials are outdated and not enough for all classrooms to share. The funds from this grant will focus on implementing an effective, innovative, inclusive, culturally-proficient, comprehensive and research-based literacy program that is systematic and vertically aligned within Early Childhood grades: PreK-4, Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd. This literacy program will be called Read to Succeed! | $5,000.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | LBJ Early College High School | LBJ Instruments to Support Learning At Home | Our students enrolled in piano and guitar classes do not have access to instruments at home, and they will be unable to continue their music education without them. The project will fund guitars and keyboards to support the continuous distant learning of our piano and guitar students who are unable to return to school due to COVID-19. | $6,450.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Linder Elementary | Creating a Culturally Inclusive Classroom Through Diverse Reading | The aim of this project is to continue to cultivate a culturally inclusive community at Linder Elementary where students are able to explore the role of culture in their own lives and how it impacts their perspective and identity as well as creating a space to recognize and celebrate cultural diversity. To help achieve this aim, this project will fund a culturally inclusive library that serves students in the fourth grade. Students will be exposed to a selection of diverse stories in both English, Spanish, and other languages. Fourth grade students will explore the questions: Why are stories important? Who writes stories and what perspectives are included in the stories? How does this impact culture? What can we learn from stories? How does culture inspire stories? How do stories shape society? How do stories shape my perspective? What is my story? How can I share my story? | $10,000.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Lively Middle School | Mindfulness in Motion: Yoga Essentials | Mindfulness in Motion will provide each yoga student the essential practice items of a yoga mat, two blocks and a strap. | $1,800.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Lively Middle School | Building Diversity in the Lively Digital Library! | Lively Falcons pride themselves on the pursuit of equity, social justice, cultural proficiency and inclusiveness. The Lively Library is the perfect vehicle to promote these goals by providing access to quality literature through the Diverse Voices in Digital Books Project. The project will add exciting voices to our digital library to meet student interest and expand their access to different experiences. With the virtual start of the school year, students will not be able to access the books in our physical library so we must increase our digital library to meet the needs of our students. Over 65% of our student population is economically disadvantaged, students do not always have the ability to buy books for themselves. The librarian will work to promote digital books and excite students through booktalks, author showcases, and book clubs. | $9,900.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Lively Middle School | Art Supply Packs | Student will be able to pick up Art supply packs curbside for the start of the new year. It would ease burden on families and increase student engagement during virtual learning. | $2,481.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Lively Middle School | Mr. Saucedo's Guitar Class | This is in order to expand students creativity not only in the classroom but out side of the classroom as well. Creating life long learners not only in music but in any discipline they are interested in. | $2,500.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Lively Middle School | Go Green! Green Screens for Virtual Theatre Performances | Theatre students will benefit from uniform green screens as part of virtual performance. If remote performance is the way of the near future, then green screens will allow us infinite possibilities to synchronize backgrounds in the editing process and create professional quality play productions. | $2,400.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Lively Middle School | Teaching in Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Ways: A Book Study Approach | This project is to help new teachers and veteran teachers develop culturally and linguistically sustaining teaching practices. This book study will provide teachers the opportunity to engage in practitioner inquiry as they engage in read current current research in bilingual education, and anti-racist literature. | $2,000.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Maplewood Elementary | RAR: Read Against Racism | We believe Black lives matter. As such, Maplewood administrators, counselor, librarian, teachers, and paraprofessionals will actively engage our school community in essential, timely readings and discussions via antiracist book clubs for students, staff, and parents. The experience will commence with an inspiring, call and response, culturally conscious storytelling session with local antiracist activists and performance artists, Riders Against the Storm and culminate in a campus community drum circle facilitated by Solomon Masala of X8 Drums. Diversity-affirming activities such as multi-cultural art walks and relationship nurturing encounters like 1:1 socially distanced home visits by teachers and TAs and LCSW-led restorative circles will be peppered throughout the school year. | $9,875.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Maplewood Elementary | Socially Distanced Science Labs | The goal of this project is to provide students with hands-on science learning experiences during this time of virtual learning and social distancing. The entire fourth-grade at Maplewood Elementary will be provided with supplies to cover forty hands-on science lab projects throughout the year. When students come back for face to face instruction the individual kits will allow for continued learning without the need for sharing supplies. | $2,235.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Martin Middle School | Campus Novel Study | Two years ago with a generous donation we were able to get a class set of 33 books to do a 8th grade novel study on Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes. This year we would love to build community within our school by reading the Ghost Boys to create connections on what is happening in our society . Our campus would spend the first half of the fall semester reading the novel, making connections to other poems, news articles, and short stories and at the end the students would write an essay on how they could make an impact in changing the world. | $3,745.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | McBee Elementary | UNITED WE READ | Our project centers around the heart of any elementary classroom, the teacher read- aloud, and expands it to the whole campus experiencing the same read aloud at approximately the same time each month. The goals of the project are to foster a strong sense of community, promote the value of reading and strengthen literacy instruction (English & Spanish), and spark collaborative and critical conversations around current social events. | $10,000.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | McCallum High School | Growing campus community capacity to navigate trust-based relationships and high | This project will provide learning and role playing practice for all staff and students to build trust and nurture relationships. The goal for this project is to empower staff and students with tools for navigating high-stakes conversations, and to ensure that each and every student in the learning community receives the social, emotional and mental health support that they need. This support is especially important during the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism, and the resulting heightened awareness of societal inequity at all levels. | $9,995.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Mendez Middle School | Conveniently Curated Chemistry for the Curious Child (C5) | While none would argue this year will begin like those that preceded, it is safe to say while the environmental factors may have changed, the curious mind of a 6th grader in some ways has not. Dreams once thought deferred can be dreams experienced today, with Conveniently Curated Chemistry for the Curious Child integrated into already successful PBL frameworks. In this unique moment in global history, it is of the utmost need to seek out opportunities to inspire our students to transition from dependent learners to independent scholars and scientists, to experience true scientific inquiries within the safety of their own home. | $9,882.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Mendez Middle School | The Reverse Parade Party: Connecting Communities, Creating Joy | With the onset of the pandemic, never before has it become ever so apparent for the need to address the community needs and whole child. We hope to plan Reverse Parades, a car drive through experience, that will provide community vendors, take home activities to engage the family, and strengthen communication internally in the family and throughout the school community. Reverse Parades will have three basic goals: family connection, school communication, and community celebration. | $5,000.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Navarro Early College High School | Keep Austin Teaching-Creator's Toolbox | Our project will provide a fun-filled, inspiring Creator's Toolbox containing a wide variety of tools and supplies to students for hands-on learning in our Education and Training Pathway courses, including Human Growth and Development, Child Development, Instructional Practices, and Practicum in Education (Ready Set Teach) at Akins and Navarro High Schools. This project will allow ALL students to participate in engaging, creative lessons and lab demonstrations during virtual learning. Our project will be showcased in the publishing of a community blog, featuring student work in Physical, Social/Emotional, and Cognitive/Intellectual development. | $7,358.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Navarro Early College High School | Fresh Reads for Freshmen: Cross-Conten Literacy in a Digital Age | By funding digital licenses of Actively Learn for the Navarro High freshmen class, we will be able to create a commonality and closeness in these distant times through shared stories. Beyond the English classroom, this would allow our World Geography and Biology classes to also access relevant texts to encourage literacy across all content areas for our newest Vikings. | $10,000.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Northeast Early College High School | Remote Control Robots | Northeast ECHS recently acquired 16 robotic arms to train students in industrial factory automation. This project will equip each robotic arm with a webcam so students can remotely control these robots from their homes. | $800.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Northeast Early College High School | Raiders of the Language Arts | Reading helps improve memory and productivity and is an essential 21st century skill. Using Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher's "180 Days: Two Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents" as a framework to guide instruction, the students will become engaged readers and writers. | $1,097.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Oak Hill Elementary | School Houses Rock | Our project proposal addresses equity, SEL needs and community-building. To start, we intend to begin the school year by providing all of our at-risk students with learning bags filled with tools that they may not normally have access to at home. In doing so, we will enable each child with the same starting opportunity to actively participate in their own learning where their success and the success of their peers is an investment that is both motivating and rewarding. | $9,875.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Odom Elementary | Learning at Home | We want to provide our students with the tools needed to learn at home during the pandemic. Math manipulatives and whiteboards at home as in school will allow students to work with tools they're familiar with and help them understand, connect, and gain a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts. | $6,272.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Odom Elementary | Really Great Reading at Home | Students at Lalla Odom Elementary have been engaged in Really Great Reading from Kinder - 2nd grade. This phonics program has increased the number of students reading on grade level. We would love to provide our students with kits to use at home while engaged in remote learning. Students have been without some of the familiarity of school since the pandemic. We know our students love Really Great Reading and would greatly enjoy and benefit from engaging in these lessons from home! | $9,425.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Overton Elementary | Nearpod: Minds-On Learning | Nearpod is a software that empowers teachers to create lessons and activities that are highly engaging, easy to use and provides students with a wide variety of ways to show comprehension, reflect and ask questions. This grant will provide teachers on our campus with the Nearpod subscription that enables us to create and deliver high quality, personalized and equitable education for our scholars in a variety of educational models. | $2,500.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Pecan Springs Elementary | Little People, Big Dreams | Pecan Springs Elementary is very lucky to have such a diverse group of parents, students and staff. However, it is hard to have that diversity equally represented in each of our classrooms. We want our Pre-K students to celebrate the color of their skin, the texture of their hair, and the achievements that others have reached so that they can dream of one day having the same accomplishments. No matter their ethnicity, background, ability or financial status, students need to see great leaders of every color and students need to feel that they are being seen in every center of our classroom. We want to support our students in celebrating our diversity, representing themselves accurately, learning about the achievements of similar looking people, and we want to provide materials that represent themselves in the classroom. | $9,979.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Perez Elementary | A Community Committed to Cultural Proficiency | Our campus at Perez Elementary is on a journey to develop our cultural proficiency and anti-racist understandings in order to value, support, and cultivate all identities that make up our community. The support of the Austin Ed Fund Grant will allow us to provide culturally responsive professional development to all staff, organize book groups to study anti-racist educational practices, and establish a community-focused restorative center. These are three important steps on our journey towards creating a campus that affirms all who learn, live, and work in our Perez community. | $10,000.00 | Cultural proficiency and inclusiveness |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Pillow Elementary | Learning at home! | Manipulatives is such an important component in elementary education. I am hoping to put manipulatives in the hands of all my students and giving them more opportunities! | $2,500.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Sadler Means Young Women's Leadership Academy | sketchbook for distant learning | Most of our students do not have the money to buy their own sketchbooks. Art is a great way to process emotions and stress. Students who have something to create on will complete their assignments on. Other materials will be provided. Creative challenges help students have choice and control over something that boosts problem solving and risk taking. These rigorous opportunities lead to high paying jobs. | $1,600.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Travis Early College High School | Literacy in Science for ESL Students | In your typical high school ESL (english as a second language) science classroom you?ll find students whose reading levels range from beginner to intermediate. However, most of the texts encountered in a science classroom are written at a 7th grade to high school level. This can be very discouraging to English language learners, since it is difficult for them to process the literature they read. By providing high school English learning students with science books at various reading levels, we hope to help close the reading gap while increasing their science vocabulary. | $3,133.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Travis Early College High School | Travis Rebel Science Fair! | We would like to provide students materials and scaffolded support to conduct independent inquiry projects at home or in the classroom or the Travis ECHS project based physics and highly relevant chemistry experiences. Ultimately, we would like to help students thoughtfully design and conduct scientific investigations that pursue their unique interests. We want to enhance connections between science and other subjects by using math to meaningfully analyze data and graphs, and English to communicate their experiences and results verbally and in writing. We also see importance in the ability to conduct digital literature searches for reliable information, especially in today?s culture of social media news. | $10,000.00 | Innovative teaching strategies |
| 2020 Special Grant Program | Walnut Creek Elementary | Home Peace Areas | This project gives teachers and school campuses everyday tools and resources to foster safe environments in the form of ?peace areas To-Go? making it portable for them to be readily available and also have the option to take it home so that it may be utilized at home as an additional resource to support parents of the students. The peace areas will consist of tubs/baskets containing a variety of proven sensory input and self-regulation tools to help students handle stress, anxiety and the various emotions that can occur throughout our days. The items that will go into the ?Peace Areas To-Go" tubs/baskets will range from playing cards, sensory toys, colors, coloring books, fidgets, bands, visuals and social emotional guides such as mini posters, workbooks, that will assist students in following along to use coping strategies. | $10,000.00 | Social and emotional wellbeing |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Akins Early College High School | Real World Criminal Justice Experience | The project is to fund some real world criminal justice experience for our criminal justice students inside and outside the classroom. The first part and the priority of the funding would be to fund competition registrations fees and allow for equipment purchases to be used to test their knowledge, skills and abilities in real world tangible scenarios they will have to act upon. The second part of the funding would be to fund the next best thing with video scenario simulations to test their knowledge and skills. | $1,500.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Austin ISD Department | Off to a Running Start: Supporting AVID Middle School Students with Their Colleg | Students in the AVID Elective choose to be in an academic elective that supports their goal towards college. One criteria for college readiness is taking the PSAT. Please support Austin ISD AVID 8th graders dream of college with assistance to take the PSAT 8/9. | $4,752.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Becker Elementary | It Takes A Village | Austin attracts millions of visitors a year, but unfortunately many of Austin?s most vulnerable children are unaware of what our great city has to offer. We want to expose them to this culturally rich city through field trips that provide opportunities for students that may otherwise be limited in scope. If they are aware of what their city and community has to offer, then they are more likely to understand how to utilize and navigate the resources in the future making them more engaged members of their community. These field trips will demonstrate that they have adults that care about them: we care about their futures, we care if they are seen and heard today, we care if they read for pleasure and most importantly, we care about who they are as individuals. | $1,074.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Blazier Elementary | Let?s build a community of readers for the future! | Mentor texts are important for building a community of learners. Children need to be exposed to books to start building a love for reading. | $1,438.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Brooke Elementary School | Learning to Invest in Our Natural Self | The Change Process discussions have become difficult for children at Brooke Elementary. As a responsive instruction campus we want to remove obstacles to learning for children. We want to provide them confidence to be learners in our global community despite what we see and hear in the media. | $645.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Casey Elementary | ROX (Ruling Our eXperiences) Empowerment Program for Girls | Girls experience a decline in how they think about themselves, their bodies and their abilities as they progress through their adolescent years. The ROX Program for Girls is a 20-week evidence-based empowerment program for girls that focuses on team-building, healthy friendships and relationships, effective communication, social media and cyber bullying, sexual harassment and violence prevention, body image, confidence and self-esteem, stress and coping, academic and career development and leadership. ROX teaches girls the actual skills required to address the challenges and pressures they face everyday. | $3,990.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Dawson Elementary | Community Experiences for Dawson Pre-K and ECSE | This grant will provide funds for all Mollie Dawson Elementary students in Pre-K 4 and Early Childhood Special Education to participate in various study trips connected to our thematic units throughout the school year. These trips include shows at the Paramount and Zach Scott Theatre, Crowe?s Nest Farm, The Thinkery, Austin Nature and Science Center, and a visit from a local traveling farm, Tiny Tails to You. Funds will also pay for school buses and school spirit shirts for all students. | $2,850.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Dawson Elementary | A Trip to Remember | I would love to take my students and their parents to Morgan's Wonderland in San Antonio for an end of year field trip. Morgan's Wonderland is a wonderful all-inclusive amusement park for kids with special needs. The majority of my students have never been to an amusement park and the ones that have, have not been able to partake in the fun due to their disability. This would be a great opportunity for them to celebrate the end of the year with their classmates and enjoy an amusement park without any boundaries. | $1,497.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Dobie Middle School | Dobie/Northeast Orchestra reboot | This project aims to put an orchestra instrument into each student's hand at Dobie Middle School. This will help Austin Sound Waves establish a strong presence at Dobie Middle with private lessons and sectional that will benefit 40-60 students per week. This project will also resurrect the non-existent Northeast High School Orchestra by providing instruments for 10 students and private lessons for 5-10 students there. The project will also, strengthen Dobie?s vertical alignment with Northeast and keep students wanting to stay in AISD. | $10,000.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Dobie Pre-K Center | Read "Mo" Books! | This project would purchase titles in both the beloved Elephant and Piggie as well as Pigeon series by Mo Willems for our school library. Our students adore these books and cannot get enough of them. The handful of titles we do have fly off the shelves. | $526.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Eastside Early College High School | Literacy Matters | Eastside Memorial High School and International High School library will provide more books that students want to read. We need books that offer access points for our linguistically and culturally diverse student population. Our goal is to build a stronger reading culture through providing high interest and accessible reading materials. | $2,500.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Eastside Early College High School | Research and Education Activities for Community Health (REACH) | REACH for New Horizons is a collaborative project concept aimed at increasing awareness of community research among minority and underserved communities in the neighborhoods of East Austin. REACH refers to Research Evaluation Activities for Community Health and will be focused on providing high school students with real experience in working alongside a community based organization who have a history of collaboration with special populations of targeted areas. | $3,500.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Harris Elementary | Sea-ing a New World | Our project is to help students gain new experiences and learn more about marine ecosystems, life cycles, and biology in an engaging and exciting way. We want to help fund a trip to go to SeaWorld at the end of the school as a final learning experience to finish our unit of marine life science. | $2,000.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | LBJ Early College High School | Houston Arts District Field Trip | We aim to bring a group of our art students to Houston for the day, to explore the museum district, including MFAH, The Center for Contemporary Craft, and The Menil Collection. | $3,275.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Martin Middle School | IAMartin - Enriching Experiences In STEAM Careers 2019 | Enriching 8th grade IAM students with an engaging field trip experience to Space Center Houston and the University of Houston. | $2,545.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Martin Middle School | AP Test funding for Spanish College Credit | My students are preparing to take their Spanish AP test for College Credit sometime during the Spring of next year. We need funding to pay for each one of them to take the test in order to earn college credit, in addition to the high school credit they will already earn. | $1,000.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Paredes Middle School | Instrumental Masterclass Program | The Instrumental Masterclass Project will provide all instrumentalists of our middle school band with authentic experiences and interactions with masters of their instrument. These masterclasses will provide our students with the specialized tools needed for further success at the individual and ensemble level. | $2,000.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Rodriguez Elementary | Call For Instruments | We are a campus serving low socioeconomic status children, and trying to provide high quality instruments for our music classroom. Many of our students, based on their high needs and socioeconomic status, do not have the opportunity to supplement or enrich their music learning outside of the school setting. Due to a low budget and very small PTO, we are reaching out for assistance by providing better quality instruments to foster a more meaningful music experience in the classroom. | $5,100.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Sadler Means Young Women's Leadership Academy | Cheer Camp Time | At Sadler Means, our cheerleading program is growing exponentially! My students need to attend a cheer camp to gain basic skills for cheerleading. While at camp, the team will learn skills in many categories such as team building, stunting, leadership skills, sideline routines and so much more! | $1,860.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Sanchez Elementary | Career Awareness for Sanchez Students | This project involves a 4th & 5th Grade Graduate trip to NASA Space Center in Houston, Texas as part of the Career Awareness component of the Schools That Work Eastside Memorial Vertical Team Initiative. As part of this initiative, all elementary schools on our vertical team are committed to promoting an atmosphere of career awareness among our students for the purpose of having them consider the options for their future at an early age. | $8,000.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | St. Elmo Elementary | McKinney Roughs Overnight Camping Learning Trip for 5th graders | We are requesting $3000 to help pay for our 5th graders to attend an overnight, educational, camping trip to McKinney Roughs. | $3,000.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Travis Early College High School | Read. Write. Lead! | We recognize that students deserve to see themselves in the characters and stories they read. We strive to provide a diverse and culturally relevant book collection in our school library and classrooms but still, #weneeddiversebooks. By publishing their own books, Perez students will become the creators of those diverse books as they tell their own stories. These student-written books will serve as mirrors where students can see themselves reflected, windows into the stories of their peers, and doors that students can walk through as book creators. | $4,110.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Travis Early College High School | Travis ECHS Social Studies Department Creative Learning Field Trips | As part of our dedication to critical reflection and action towards societal and political equality, our Social Studies Department plans to take all students to the Blanton Art Museum once per semester. There, students will experience hands-on workshops curated to their grade level curriculum as a creative learning initiative. We believe providing access to artistic environments encourages our students to meaningfully explore society and enhances their learning outside of the classroom. Additionally, students will tour the UT ? Austin campus in order to explore their post-secondary options after graduation. | $2,800.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Travis Early College High School | Senior College Survival Kits | The Travis College Access Team is looking to fund college survival kits to 60 seniors who complete all the necessary steps to move into their college and university this upcoming fall. This program is looking to serve first generation and racially underrepresented incoming college students who will be living at a junior college or university dormitory as they pursue their bachelor?s degree. Specifically, 89% of our student body has been identified as economically disadvantaged, this financial need is also a continued barrier as demonstrated by them being select as Pell Grant recipients. | $3,660.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Walnut Creek Elementary | Gettin' Diggy With It | Our archaeological expedition is designed to get our students exposure to one of a kind experiences in STEM fields where they can do hands on investigations. Our students will be led by researchers through critical archaeological field work and teach them how to get diggy. Minority students with a low socioeconomic status are at a severe disadvantage in STEM fields, help us address this by providing profound experiences for our at risk youth. | $520.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Student Opportunity Fund | Widen Elementary | Seeing outside of Austin - Field trips in the upper grades | I am the head of the SEL Committee on campus and we are looking to provide grade levels with the financial opportunities to attend field trips as fourth and fifth grade teams. From venturing to the Alamo in the touchstone fourth grade culminating activity for Texas history to adventure seeking and team building at Camp Champions in fifth grade, we are looking for funding for these field trips so that all children can enjoy these special experiences. | $3,500.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Allison Elementary | STEAMSPACE: Keep Austin Coding | Throughout the year, students will lead and host robotics camps for other classmates which will promote 21st Century Learners. In the spring, students will compete in the First Lego League Robotics Competition. Our makerspace will be accessible for all students and prepare students for STEAM pathway | $9,510.00 | STEAM |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Austin High School | Inclusion Innovation Project | This project will add sensory items and an inclusion awareness campaign to support high school students participating in Special Education. It includes a Sensory Awareness and Inclusion Day to teach all high school students the unique needs of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. | $1,350.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD) | Pre-K Structural Engineers! | Pre-K Structural Engineers is a project where teachers will set up dynamic block centers that allow children to plan, design and build creatively with hands-on materials. Teachers will facilitate questioning during adult/child interactions in block play to improve students? science/math vocabulary. | $3,327.00 | STEAM |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD) | Baby Doll Circle time | All PK3 students in AISD will be provided the tools to implement the outstanding Conscious Discipline Baby Doll Circle Time Curriculum in both English and Spanish. This curriculum enhances the connection between caregivers and students, strengthening attachment and attunement through social play. | $4,774.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Blazier Elementary | Flexible seating for Flexible Kindergarteners | We want to provide our students with the specialized seating needed to develop their collaborative skills and assist in keeping each child engaged in all learning opportunities. Flexible seating gives each child the ability to choose the seat that works best for themselves. | $1,741.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Bowie High School | Makerspace Mania | A primary objective of this project is to create a STEAM makerspace to promote ?invention literacy? and increase reading of nonfiction informational texts, create problem solvers and foster an inclusive community for all types of learners. | $3,348.00 | STEAM |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Brooke Elementary School | Podcasting at Brooke | You may already be a podcast-lover, but have you considered getting your kids in on the fun? Podcasts are a great way to help cut-down on your kids? screen time and get them interested in something new! One of the best things about podcasts is that they cover a huge range of topics. | $5,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Casey Elementary | Outdoor Learning Lab | Out Teach will help X design an outdoor learning lab that will allow for authentic student collaboration where students will work together to create, build, experiment, analyze and discover learning. The outdoor environment will excite and engage students in learning about their world. | $10,000.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Cunningham Elementary | Coffee Shop Learning | Students will open up a coffee business on campus. They will learn about team work, entrepreneurship, and TEK-based skills in math and ELA. They will use any profit made to donate to voted on non-profits and charities in our community. | $2,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Dawson Elementary | Music and Movement on the Playground! | We would like to enhance and enrich our early childhood playground with music, activity, and exploration equipment that students can use during outside play and classroom activities. | $9,134.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Graham Elementary | Dive into The Spring Lake! | This project is connecting reading fiction with themes of inquiry, nature, and ecological understanding to guided authentic hands-on experiences in the field, and gives the students unique opportunities for interdisciplinary success. | $6,599.00 | STEAM |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Kealing Middle School | Code Remedies: MakeRx for Others | Advanced digital makers will design and create exciting, interactive exemplars of real-world phenomena for other classes using kits, code, and cardboard. Non-coding students will then be supported as they collaborate and code; they will also be inspired to take coding classes to build their skills. | $6,395.00 | STEAM |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Lee Elementary School | Wearing Improved Attention | This project would help students with sensory integration or behavior issues. Students wearing the weighted vest would have less off task behavior which would increase school performance. The vest would offer a deep touch pressure which would have a calming effect on the central nervous system. | $2,000.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Lee Elementary School | Flexible Seating in the 21st Century Classroom | The innovative and flexible seating facilitates better student learning and increases students' attention span and critical thinking ability. It provides them with a unique, comfortable, and inspiring environment which allows for additional student voice and ownership of the classroom environment. | $854.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Maplewood Elementary | One Size Does NOT Fit All: a spectrum of options to meet students? special needs | We serve many neuro-diverse students, including those on the autism spectrum, who?ll benefit from pet therapy, specialized equipment for nervous system regulation, & environments designed for sensory sensitivities. Our staff will better address our students? special needs after targeted trainings. | $8,000.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Martin Middle School | The Family Portrait Project | The Family Portrait Project connects our students? photography program to a school-wide writing contest.Why a family portrait is meaningful? Ten families win a shoot & a framed photo. We address a need in our community that is as simple as to feel ?represented.? As photographers, we can provide that | $710.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Mathews Elementary | Creating a Positive Learning Culture through Sensory Breaks and Character Educa | We will provide a formal character education program to widen our students? apertures to see others and build positive relationships. We will provide sensory kits for every classroom and a sensory path in the hallway to meet the needs of our students and furnish the tools needed to be successful. | $8,647.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | McBee Elementary | Cross-Town Conversations: Creating Connections With Diverse Literature | 4th graders connect with cross-town pen pals at other AISD schools, both in letters and online. Pen pals discuss topics from diverse literature they have both read. At the end of each semester, students select a gift book for their pen pal, which they deliver in person on a field trip. | $10,000.00 | Literacy |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Navarro Early College High School | CineMath | CineMath is an innovative collaboration of mathematic and cinematic technology that exposes students to an unforgettable hands-on STEAM learning expedition where students will create the ultimate cinematic viewing experience using real-world settings and professional tools. | $10,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Northeast Early College High School | Equipping a used CNC Mill with modern capability. | A Tormach 1100 CNC Mill was recently donated to our school for the engineering and auto-mechanic classes to fabricate custom metal parts. However, it is missing a few components to make it a modern manufacturing system. | $7,219.00 | STEAM |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | St. Elmo Elementary | Music Minds of the Millennial | Technology is the future. I am a huge fan of technology and thoroughly embrace the possibilities. Music is intertwined within those possibilities and I want kids to further their knowledge of music and technology, whether it's Garage Band, Soundtrap, and SO MUCH MORE. Having devices are crucial. | $2,000.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Summitt Elementary | Blasting Off Into Kinder with Countdown | We hope to implement a robust phoneme and phonics program across all kindergarten classes that will set students up with the skills they need for reading automaticity and grade-level or above literacy by 3rd grade. | $5,394.00 | Literacy |
| 2019 Innovation Grant | Travis Early College High School | Summer Math Acceleration | Students who enter High School on grade level take Algebra 1 in 9th grade. The prescribed Math sequence for these students concludes with Pre-Calculus . Students who pursue STEM degrees in college require Calculus. Summer Math acceleration is necessary for these students to reach Calculus in HS. | $2,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Alternative Learning Center | Pathways to Higher Education | Supporting the Pathways to Higher Education Series, high school students have opportunities to attend campus visits to colleges and universities both inside and beyond the Austin city limits. | $2,000.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD) | The 5 Book Dive Presents: The 2018 Summer Reading Splash | Supporting AISD's Summer Reading Programs focused on increasing reading opportunities for 3rd-5th graders at Title 1 schools, where students and families attend a Summer Reading Celebration to meet award winning authors and take home free books! | $7,500.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Blazier Elementary | Current Events Non-fiction Reading Resources for Dual Language 3rd | Engaging students' reading skills through full-color non-language magazines in both English & Spanish. | $375.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Dobie Pre-K Center | You Are What You Read: Developing the School Library Collection to Reflect the W | Funding an updated and expanded collection of diverse books in Spanish, Arabic, and Mandarin languages for pre-school students in order to develop their identity and sense of self worth by seeing themselves represented in stories. | $1,000.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Dobie Pre-K Center | Pre-K Experiences | Funding real-world experiences for Pre-K4 student including swim lessons at YMCA, exploring STEM concepts at The Thinkery, agricultural ideas at Crow's Nest Farm, and expanding their creativity at The Magik Theatre. | $2,500.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Eastside Early College High School | Educational ?SPEAR? Project | Providing field trips to Historically Black Colleges and Universities for students who participate in an in-depth program that prepares and supports mostly students of color through the college admission process. | $5,000.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Galindo Elementary | Wishing for Wish Girl | Preparing 4th graders to take the STAAR writing test by inviting an author to conduct 2 writing workshops in conjuction with a book study. | $1,290.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Graham Elementary | Social Studies on the Go! | Funding community-based field trips for 4th graders that are related to grade-level texts, where students learn about the local resources, gathering information, and how to use that information in their own lives. | $3,250.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Guerrero Thompson Elementary | Support Student Reading Choice With Engaging Library Books | Funding the update and expansion of the Library collection with a focus on fiction stories, STEM-related topics, and texts written in Spanish. | $490.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Harris Elementary | Building Future Engineers | Providing an opportunity for 3rd grade students to attend a field trip to the Bob Bullock Museum to view "Dream Big: Engineering Our World" in order to expose students to career opportunities in engineering. | $650.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | LBJ Early College High School | Project: Be The Change | Spring and Summer College Field Trips for AVID Students - many who would be first generation college students - to explore local college opportunities. | $5,000.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Mendez Middle School | Building a STEM Culture at Mendez Middle School | Providing 6th grade students the opportunity to learn experientially, develop STEM skills, and participate in a STEM competition event, while supporting the school's transformation into a T-STEM academy. | $5,000.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Metz Elementary | The Outdoor School for Metz | Providing 5th grade students with an opportunity to participate in an outdoor field trip overnight where students collaborate on educational and team building activities. | $2,000.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Navarro Early College High School | Scenario Lab | Funding the construction of a Scenario Lab that would offer intense hands-on learning experiences made possible by a collaboration between the Criminal Justice and Construction programs. | $4,345.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Palm Elementary | Palm Learns Outside | Supporting an outdoor field trip to Camp Champions for 70 5th grade students where they build trust, experience teamwork, and develop critical thinking skills. | $1,470.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Reilly Elementary | The Outdoor School Field Trip | Providing 5th grade students with the annual outdoor field trip to Camp Champions for students to participate in academic, physical and social activities. | $2,000.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Sadler Means Young Women's Leadership Academy | Connecting YWLA Girls from Capital to Capital | Funding a History-focused field trip for 8th grade students to travel to Washington D.C. where they will explore national monuments and Georgetown University. | $5,750.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2018 Student Opportunity Fund | Uphaus Early Childhood Center | Uphaus Take Home and Keep Forever Books | Supplying Bilingual Spanish books for students to take home, coupled with parent workshops on literacy and math to help their children over the summer prevent summer slide. | $1,050.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Alternative Learning Center | All Means All: Providing a Path to Graduation with CTE and Urban Roots | For the first time, ALC will offer CTE courses that will help students persist on the path to graduation by providing CTE elective opportunities that are grounded in SEL through the Urban Roots program partnership. Funding will assist in purchasing interactive technology in the form of Odysseyware. | $9,999.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Anderson High School | SEL Awareness Training for Staff | Broadening our SEL training for facilitating feelings of belonging, pride, and community on our campus, we would like to train faculty and staff in the areas of inclusivity, cultural responsiveness, and diversity. | $9,999.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Andrews Elementary | Sensory Overload | This project will create an area that will cater to the specific needs for students with autism. Our unt does not only service students from our campus but also houses students from different areas in the Austin Independent School District. | $1,960.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders | Media Technology Pathway | This grant funds the purchase of quality cameras and equipment to support hands-on learning in the Media Technology college-to-career pathway at the Ann Richards School. | $3,110.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders | PALS Puppet Theatre | Students will use puppets and write skits that incorporate mindfulness and the 5 SEL competencies into entertaining and educational lessons to present to the elementary schools that we serve. The PALS will also use the puppet theatre on our own campus to lead SEL advisory lessons and mindfulness | $950.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders | Cities In Space | Space colonization on Mars, the Moon, and into Free Space will require an immense amount of skills and resources. You will research, design, and create the society of the future based on your chosen destination. Your goal is based upon settling a sustainable colony of 1,000 people. | $3,570.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Austin High School | Flexible Seating for Learning | Students are more successful when collaborative learning spaces and flexible seating are available in classrooms. Providing student-centered options for the learning environment will engage students and build 4C skills: collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and communication. | $1,900.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Austin ISD Department | The AISD Science + Mathematics X Conference: A Gateway for Equity | The AISD Science + Mathematics X Conference is a 4-day professional learning event open to AISD and Austin-area, PreK-12 science and math educators. Participants can choose from over 150 interactive workshops that emphasize district priorities, including equity, whole child, literacy, and STEM. | $9,999.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Baldwin Elementary | Sphero Robotics | Sphero Edu provides coding and 21st century skills by incorporating robotics and technology. Students begin learning with Sphero by drawing digital paths that represent code for their robot to follow. As they progress they learn to use block-based commands, and then move into using JavaScript! | $1,800.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Bedichek Middle School | Engaging Collaboration - Taking the Mundane to the Extraordinary! | This project will take mundane practice activities to the next level by providing engaging problem solving and collaboration. Students will work together to unlock mystery boxes or create code for a robotic road map by solving clues and answering content-related problems. | $2,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Blazier Elementary | SEL Read Aloud Project for Dual Language | This bilingual project builds SEL skills through Read Aloud opportunities. These valuable skills are brought to life through compelling and compassionate books and materials, which can be used for future students each year. | $250.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Boone Elementary | Engage and Enrich with Music - Strategies for the Primary Classroom Teacher | The focus of this project is to provide primary grade teachers with proven strategies to incorporate musical activities in the classroom. The goal is to increase student engagement in Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies, while stimulating social and emotional development. | $3,050.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Bowie High School | Pathway for the Botdawgs | Pathway for the Botdawgs Project seeks to build a robust Computer Science program with a Robotics pathway providing access to classroom robotics kits, equipment, and curriculum -- enabling students to imagine, program, and produce! | $9,999.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Brentwood Elementary | GoodReadz | This is a grassroots effort beginning at the kindergarten level and continuing thru 5th grade to get kids excited about reading. It is a way for kids to share online book reviews with each other. The program is called GoodReadz (after the Goodreads adult site.) | $8,000.00 | Literacy |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Casey Elementary | Read and Create! Library Media Center STREAM Makerspace | Creation and development of a school library media center STREAM (Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Art, Math) stationary and mobile makerspace to engage students through innovative, creative, and fun reading and maker activities. | $2,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Casey Elementary | Maker Space Learning Lab | Our elementary campus will have a Maker Space Learning Lab where students can apprentice their 21st Century Skills called the 4Cs which are Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, and Critical Thinking in a Maker Space Learning Lab. | $6,550.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Casey Elementary | The S.P.A.C.E. Program (Sensory Processing Advanced Classroom Environment) | The Sensory Processing Advanced Classroom Environment Program, or SPACE program, is designed to provide a sensory sensitive classroom environment for all students. Fifth grade students will receive explicit instruction in supporting their sensory processing needs. Students will be taught to self-e | $2,320.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Cook Elementary | Code Me a Story | Code Me a Story blends storytelling with coding and robotics to engage students in 21st century technology skills through literature. | $1,365.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Crockett Early College High School | Starting with Science: Science Fair & the Biotechnology Lab | The primary purpose of this project to provide equipment funding for advanced dual credit biotechnology classes in which students will have the opportunity to earn college credit through Austin Community College. A secondary goal of this project is to establish a working biology/biotechnology/chemistry. | $1,830.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Eastside Early College High School | Classroom without Walls - A Day in Space! | Students from economically disadvantaged families will spend a day at NASA. Students will obtain real world experience in the implementation of the trans formative use of technology. | $4,770.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Guerrero Thompson Elementary | Let's Bring Story Wranglers to Guerrero Thompson | Story Wranglers is a Literacy to Life program that I would like to bring to our Title 1 campus. This program would allow approximately 100 third grade students to participate in theater/creative writing activities that are designed to improve their creativity, confidence, and academic performance. | $8,000.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Gullett Elementary | Gecko Weekly NewsCast | The Weekly NewsCast Project is a weekly video cast of relevant school- and community-based news reports prepared and delivered by fifth grade students, making this student-centered approach an effective communication technique for digitally experienced students. | $700.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Northeast Early College High School | Automated Light Show with Raspberry PI | Capstone Engineering Students will design and build an automated light show using a Raspberry PI and relay modules to synchronize music to a light display. Designed and constructed by a group of 20 this will be on display to the school population of 1200. | $1,600.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Palm Elementary | Coding Robotics / Junior Botball Challenge | Due to advances in technology, it has become critical for students to learn the world of coding. | $2,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Palm Elementary | The Art of Science | As an art teacher who grew up in a science-y household, I would like to blend art and science in rigorous project-based learning. Ideally, there would be three groups taught in 45-minute increments: 20 1st & 2nd graders, 20 3rd and 4th graders, and 20 5th graders. | $2,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Pillow Elementary | Maker's Space - Let's tinker, explore, design, and create! | Maker's Space is an informal, inquiry based learning atmosphere where knowledge can unfold in a creative, exploratory manner rather than an overly structured agenda. All AISD students deserve a learning opportunity that provides collaborative, hands-on, creative ways to explore their curiosities. | $2,000.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Sadler Means Young Women's Leadership Academy | Passion for Fashion After School Club (PFF) | The Passion for Fashion After School Club will focus on fashion design, exploring fashion trends, and provide learning opportunities for students to create their designs. It will support sisterhood, building self-esteem, and give real-world application for higher education and career goals. | $7,250.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Walnut Creek Elementary | Mission imPodsible | Students will be putting their Walters/Cronkite skills to the test during our course on interviews. At the conclusion of this unit, students will have written interview questions, conducted interviews, and created a compelling podcast about an issue of their choosing affecting our school or community. This will be added to an ongoing digital portfolio. | $4,140.00 | Literacy |
| 2018 Innovation Grant | Winn Elementary | Addressing the Resource Gap Through an Anti-Bias Lens | This project seeks to address gaps in resources and achievement by empowering teachers to cultivate culturally responsive, anti-bias, anti-racist classrooms. Training will support teachers in exploring their own identities and uproot their own unconscious biases in order to better serve students. | $7,500.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2017 Student Opportunity Fund | Anderson High School | Bus Passes for Students | Providing bus passes for low-SES students who need to stay late for extracurriculars, or who transferred and lack transport, at targeted campuses. | $3,000.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2017 Student Opportunity Fund | Austin High School | McDonald Observatory Field Trip | Supporting scholarships for students to participate in an overnight field trip to the McDonald Observatory. | $1,500.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2017 Student Opportunity Fund | Bowie High School | Project College Credit for Bulldogs | Supporting Advanced Placement Exam Fees for low-SES students to earn college credit. | $2,300.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2017 Student Opportunity Fund | Burnet Middle School | Burnet uniform Fund | Funding for student uniforms to help support a learning focused environment and build confidence for students. | $9,592.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2017 Student Opportunity Fund | Govalle Elementary | Inspiring Students to Dream Big and Beyond | Supporting an all-year peer academic and social-emotional support group program with culminating 2 day field study experience. | $8,160.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2017 Student Opportunity Fund | Guerrero Thompson Elementary | Book Swap | Providing books for student home libraries to ensure all students have access to compelling literature at home. | $440.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2017 Student Opportunity Fund | Guerrero Thompson Elementary | Camp Champ | Supporting a 5th grade field trip to Camp Champions by funding 10 scholarships for economically disadvantaged students. | $1,600.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2017 Student Opportunity Fund | Gus Garcia Young Men's Leadership Academy | Advancing Academic Achievement | Supporting equipment and support personnel for academic enrichment opportunities for students participating in academic UIL competitions, UIL & independent chess competitions. | $8,790.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2017 Student Opportunity Fund | Harris Elementary | Science Near and Far | Bringing science field experiences to campus through hosting mobile planetarium programming. | $1,500.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2017 Student Opportunity Fund | Kealing Middle School | Kealing Hornet Goal-Achievement Incentive Program | Supporing a student led incentive program to encourage improvement in academics, attendance, and behavior for Academy students. | $2,000.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2017 Student Opportunity Fund | Martin Middle School | IAMartin - Enriching Experiences In STEAM Careers | Supporting capstone project materials and field trip for the 8th grade Innovation Academy cohort to have real-world experiences and challenges in STEAM fields. | $2,949.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2017 Student Opportunity Fund | Martin Middle School | A Pathway to Audio/Visual Media | Supplying the new Audio/Visual Media classes with equipment to ensure students are able to explore Photography and Media careerpaths through hands-on experience with proper equipment. | $9,998.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Akins Early College High School | Transform our World with Design | Creation of design lab for fine arts/ theatre students to master industry-level CAD light plot design, 3D rendering, and projection mapping | $9,882.00 | STEAM |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders | Textiles Tech Lab | CTE Fashion and Interior Design- focused lab for 12-week textile-themed project units focused on product design, ethics and environmentalism, and interactive architecture project | $5,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Austin High School | Innovative Learning Spaces | Creation of outdoor Builderspace and mobile Design Carts to empower Project Based Learning in new 9th-grade academy model | $5,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Bedichek Middle School | The Power of Collaborative TECH | Providing technology to enhance collaboration on real-world driven entrepreneurship projects | $2,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Bowie High School | Let There Be Light | Physics and chemistry equipment to engage lower-performing students in spectrometric gas emission experiments | $1,282.00 | STEAM |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Casey Elementary | Chillville | Mindfulness room with sensory equipment for special education students to regulate emotions and be ready to learn | $1,614.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Clifton Career Development School | Clifton Gourmet Mushrooms | Professionalizing the farm-to-table oyster mushroom cultivation and entrepreneurship program for special education students in Horticulture career track | $3,952.00 | STEAM |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Cowan Elementary | Culturally Responsive Multi-Campus Book Study | Interactive, in-depth study of culturally responsive teaching on six elementary campuses across four vertical teams | $4,446.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Crockett Early College High School | Student INC Entrepreneurship Program (Crocket Vertical Team) | Bridge to sustainability for real-world collaborative entrepreneurship program, including thematic field trips and summer learning activities for incoming 9th graders | $3,370.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Graham Elementary | Learn the Past to Build the Future! | Engaging students in history, current events, and cross-cultural understanding through monthly thematic novel studies | $7,172.00 | Literacy |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Hart Elementary | Rocket Ambassadors | Ambassador program pairing former refugee students as mentors to recently arrived "Little Buddies" for social/emotional integration into new school and culture | $1,000.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Houston Elementary | First Grade Learning Cafe | In my learning caf? students will have the option of sitting on wobble stools, exercise balls, the floor, or a typical class chair. By providing a choice of both where they wish to sit and what type of seat they will sit in students will feel in control of their learning environment which will improve learning. | $1,135.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Maplewood Elementary | Make Space for Learning! | Transformation of underutilized hallway into hands-on, accessible STEAM activity space for MakerSpace Mondays | $9,403.00 | STEAM |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | McCallum High School | The Virtual Future | Development of afterschool program for students to design Virtual Reality systems and films for emerging cutting-edge industry | $3,369.00 | STEAM |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Oak Hill Elementary | Literacy in Motion | Scaling multisensory kinesthetic literacy program, Really Great Reading, across all K-2 classes | $8,500.00 | Literacy |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Wooldridge Elementary | Read, Think, Make: A Literacy Based Makerspace Program | Creation of library makerspace utilizing kinesthetic learning to boost ELL students' literacy by creating authentic projects based on reading comprehension | $3,291.00 | STEAM |
| 2017 Innovation Grant | Zavala Elementary | Zavala's IDEA Lab (Invention, Design, Engineering, and Art) | Creation of makerspace to replicate real-life experiences, bridge STEM curriculum across vertical team, and provide hands-on thematic activities linked to capstone projects and STEM careers | $5,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2016 Student Opportunity Fund | Akins Early College High School | Keep Austin Teaching Conference Support | Funding registration and travel expenses for Ready Set Teach students who have qualified for the regional Texas Association of Future Educators competition in Arlington. | $2,480.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2016 Student Opportunity Fund | Austin ISD Department | Refugee Student and Family Support | Funding native-language academic tutoring and bilingual dictionaries for refugee students across the district to support their academic, social, cultural, and language transition to Austin ISD. | $14,500.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2016 Student Opportunity Fund | Gus Garcia Young Men's Leadership Academy | Student-Led Incentives for Brotherhood Accountability | Funding incentive-based field trips earned via student-developed benchmarks for  improved academics, behavior, and attendance. | $6,300.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2016 Student Opportunity Fund | Mendez Middle School | Maverick Green STEM Launch | Supporting quality STEM-focused field trips, digital cameras, and creation of a Community Garden as part of new signature STEM academy. | $11,988.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2016 Student Opportunity Fund | Navarro Early College High School | Lanier WiFi HotSpots | Purchasing library sets of mobile WiFi hotspots and accompanying devices to ensure Lanier High School students have opportunities to do online research and schoolwork at home. | $4,200.00 | Classroom supplies & materials |
| 2016 Student Opportunity Fund | Widen Elementary | Student-Led Original Musical | Piloting an immersive cross-curricular arts process for 4th and 5th graders, resulting in an original student-created musical. | $10,532.00 | Providing students with experiences & opportunities |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Akins Early College High School | Mission to Mars: Launch your Engineering Adventure! | Two-month Mission to Mars unit focused on integrating engineering, teamwork, and problem solving skills, culminating with trip to NASA | $8,095.00 | STEAM |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Akins Early College High School | Eagles Encourage Eaglets to Express | Student-brainstormed and -led project for high school "Ready, Set, Teach" interns to incorporate hands-on Social Emotional Learning projects at elementary campuses | $5,433.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Andrews Elementary | Creating Time for Collaboration | Support for grade-level planning three times yearly to launch the AISD pilot for the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme in high-needs campus | $8,700.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders | Trebuchet Design & Launch Project | Student teams design, build, & test Middle Ages-era Trebuchet to refine engineering skills | $1,622.00 | STEAM |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders | Harmony Living Wall Project | Combining tech and environmental learning by creating an indoor living wall embedded with sensors to monitor temperature, CO2, and humidity | $1,764.00 | STEAM |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Bedichek Middle School | Bedichek Goes Live | Launching phase 2 of hands-on entrepreneurship project- creating online branch of school spirit store | $2,000.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Casey Elementary | Casey STEAM Media Studio | Creating media studio for students to write, direct, record, produce, & showcase their very own programming | $5,566.00 | STEAM |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Clifton Career Development School | Livestock Production | Real-world hands-on instruction for special-needs students via animal science entrepreneurship | $2,000.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Govalle Elementary | Roadrunner Reading Rebirth: A Literacy Library Project | In response to teacher feedback, update and refurbish campus literacy library with culturally relevant & effective instructional resources to increase capacity to teach | $8,075.00 | Literacy |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Gullett Elementary | Let's Tink About It! | Converting underused computer lab into the "Tinkering Lab" for hands-on science learning | $6,251.00 | STEAM |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Joslin Elementary | Jaguars Read | Workshop series to teach parents strategies to create and reinforce literacy-rich environments at home | $1,611.00 | Literacy |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Mathews Elementary | Innovative Designs with Little Bits & Kits! | Pioneering Makerspace lab at the elementary level for AISD where students can collaborate to code, design, & create projects | $6,983.00 | STEAM |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Navarro Early College High School | The Lost & Sound Room | Innovative, state-of-the-art music production studio where at-risk students who feel lost can express themselves in a safe space | $9,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Northeast Early College High School | Reagan Readers Book Club | Increasing college readiness and culture of literacy through establishment of campus book club | $2,000.00 | Literacy |
| 2016 Innovation Grant | Sadler Means Young Women's Leadership Academy | YWLA Girls Conference | Student-generated and -led professional Girls Conference to address identified campus areas of concern and need | $5,900.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders | 6th Grade STARS Spring Plant Sale | Entrepreneurship program for students to collaboratively lead cultivation, marketing, and business plan for selling plants | $1,398.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders | The Great Debate: Fluoridation of Drinking Water | Project-based chemistry unit tied to real-world environmental issue impacting the Austin community | $2,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | Burnet Middle School | Organisms and Environments | Outdoor science experiments utilizing the insect habitats around campus | $2,000.00 | STEAM |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | Garza Independence High School | Green Urban Innovative Gardeners | "Reinventing the urban school experience" through creation of urban garden focused on sustainability and community volunteerism | $9,992.00 | STEAM |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | Kealing Middle School | Active Seating for the Whole Child | Introduction of classroom seating that encourages natural movement | $1,815.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | Kiker Elementary | Tiny Tech Explorers | Creating 21st century Pre-K centers with nonbreakable technology for our littlest learners | $1,998.00 | STEAM |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | Mendez Middle School | Inspiring and Supporting Career Paths | Helping students attain American Red Cross certification as first foray into importance of career credentialing | $1,450.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | Northeast Early College High School | Learning Independence Through Technology (LITT) | Teach special education students technology skills to help with transition to employment and close achievement gaps | $4,330.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | Northeast Early College High School | Wheel Chair Accessible Teaching Garden | Accessible garden for special education students to enhance critical thinking and advance physical and manual dexterity goals | $2,000.00 | Whole child, every child |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | Oak Hill Elementary | Leaping to Literacy | Year-long observational STEM experiment on the growth of bullfrogs, incorporating reading and writing | $1,023.00 | Literacy |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | Oak Hill Elementary | Multisensory Reading: A Path to Success for Dyslexic Students | Establishing hub for 3rd grade dyslexia intervention program in both reading and math | $1,106.00 | Literacy |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | Odom Elementary | Odom Eagles' Girls' Robotics Club | Expanding student-led girls' robotics program to increase female minority STEM participation | $3,858.00 | STEAM |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | Sadler Means Young Women's Leadership Academy | Jumbled Genres Bingo | Creation of campus-wide incentive program to increase non-fiction reading aligned with curriculum | $2,000.00 | Literacy |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | St. Elmo Elementary | Reader to Reader | Building literacy skills via development of after-school reading clubs incorporating high-interest SEL and Creative Learning strategies | $5,000.00 | Literacy |
| 2015 Innovation Grant | Summitt Elementary | Mobility and Sensory Tools for Learning | Implementing tools for movement in learning, alternative seating, & sensory support to increase attention to task | $9,614.00 | Whole child, every child |
