Grant Cash Crucial to Education|Southern Education Desk
School administrators across the country are continually searching for ways to augment their budgets.
Educators stress the importance of grant money in keeping alive various programs.
Students, teachers and administrators agree the influx of cash that extends beyond a school’s budget is crucial to the learning process.
Students at Martin Luther King Middle School in Monroe Louisiana gather after school to learn how to sing.
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MLK Students Tune Up After School
Instructor Darrien Bryant says the budding tunesmiths have talent.
“There are some interesting individuals. And you do have some musicians, some singers and they like to do their own thing.”
But this music program would not happen without grant money.
This particular afterschool curriculum is paid for with a federal endowment known as the 21st Century Community Leaning Center grant.
The federal education budget provided just over one-point-one billion dollars for these grants both in 2010 and 2011.
The money is geared toward providing additional instruction for students attending low performing schools in academic subjects, as well as in extra-curricular areas such as music.
The program is popular in the South.
Federal documents show Alabama received about sixteen-and-a-half-million dollars in 21st Century grants this year; Georgia got close to forty-million dollars.
In Louisiana, which took in nearly twenty-three-million, Patricia Johnson oversees 21st Century grants for Monroe City schools.
She says conditions for maintaining cash flow are stringent.
“We have to show that the money that’s coming into the district is directly correlated to improvement in the schools.”
While the district has adhered to the grant’s guidelines, the money is not perpetual.
“It’s a huge concern because it is a successful program. We have one school that has about 420 students in their afterschool program. That particular grant will end in May in 2012. We are looking at other prospects or other grants that possibly could support a portion of that. But 100 percent? It is a concern.”
Dr. Thilla Sivakumaran is the associate dean in the University of Louisiana at Monroe’s Education Department.
The veteran grant writer says keeping cash flowing from any grant source depends on delivering what you promise.
“If you can show that you are successful in running this grant and building the things that you said you were going to do it helps you get refunded.”
The Martin Luther King Middle School students are doing their best to fulfill their end of the bargain.
Sixth-grader Cierra Jackson says the Century 21 grant is vital for her school and her classmates.
“I really want it to keep going because it can help more than just me in this program. Not just the music, but with the reading, the English – help us keep everything up so we can make straight A’s.”
Seventh-grader Quaylun Williams says the program is the key to a better future.
“It’s very important for kids to have after school curriculum because most kids are out on the street. We really need this to be better people.”
Meanwhile, at Monroe City Schools, Patricia Johnson says she has received assurances from the district that the afterschool program will continue.
Still, she realizes there are no absolute guarantees.
“Worst case scenario is that it would end. We just would not have the program.”
There is reason to believe that the Century 21 grant is safe at least in the short term
The 2012 federal education budget projects continuing it with an additional one-hundred-million dollars added to the one-point-one billion dollar base.