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Board Might Match Grants Schools Could Get Double Their Money

Posted on: Wednesday, 21 September 2005, 03:01 CDT

Columbia County school board members said in a Tuesday meeting they will consider a plan to match grants obtained by schools, to a point.

Stevens Creek Elementary School Principal Michelle Paschal, at the urging of her school council, proposed the idea of grant matching to the board in July.

Board member Wayne Bridges called it a worthwhile idea, with a cap limit of about $5,000 per school.

"I personally think this is a good idea, with these parameters," he said. "I think it's something we can experiment with for a year."

Board Chairwoman Regina Buccafusco said a cap limit is needed to protect the board.

"There really is no way we can fund an open-ended request like that," she said.

Bridges said the grant-matching proposal would provide an incentive for schools to seek grants, which he referred to as "free money." However, he expressed concern about educators spending too much time on grant writing.

"We don't need to be full-time grant writers," he said. "They need to be teaching."

The board asked Columbia County school Superintendent Tommy Price to put together a plan for considering matching grants and report back to them.

Also at the meeting:

The school system's Teachers of Year were named at the meeting.

The five finalists for Columbia County Teacher of the Year were: Andy Baumgartner, a kindergarten teacher at Greenbrier Elementary School; Noel Feeney, an English teacher at Harlem High; Leeann Fleischauer, a second-grade teacher at Euchee Creek Elementary; Camille Spires, a visual arts teacher at Bel Air Elementary; and Leslie Wright, an eighth-grade teacher at Greenbrier Middle.

The finalists will undergo observation and interviews by a panel of judges in early September. The winner will be named at a banquet Sept. 15 at West Lake Country Club.

Price named Bekki Matthews, of Lakeside High, as the county's Media Specialist of the Year.

Matthews and the Teacher of the Year will go on to compete on the state level.

The board approved a rule that could prevent system employees from putting their children in their school. In the past, a privilege granted to teachers and administrators was placing their children in their school, or a feeder school to their school, regardless of the zone they lived in. An ever-growing student population might make that difficult in the future, Price said.

"The approval of an employee's child to attend the school will be contingent upon space availability of the receiving school," the new rule states.

Price called it a preventative measure. "I don't think it will come into play very often, or at all," he said.

Source: Augusta Chronicle, The

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