20 teachers attended a Grant Writing Workshop on Wednesday.
The Bartlesville Public Schools Foundation put on the free event. Blair Ellis, the Executive Director of BPSF, said the event was held in the Education Service Center’s Auditorium.
One of the purposes of the workshop was to improve the quality of the grants the Bartlesville Public Schools Foundations receives from its teachers. It was also meant to equip teachers with tools and techniques to help them when they apply for funding from any third party grant maker.
The BPSF’s Growth Grant Committee Chair put a 15 minute Power Point together to go over with the teachers. They reviewed the slides together before the floor opened up to questions that all Grant Committee Chairs were happy to answer.
Teachers from Bartlesville High School, Central Middle School and Hoover, Ranch Heights, Wayside and Wilson Elementary Schools were all in attendance.
Ellis said there are four categories for grants. Those are: Classroom Grants, Professional Growth Grants, Experts and Residents Grants, and Science Grants.
Teachers then fill out an application. Sometimes those applications include a narrative section which asks the teachers to explain what outcome they expect to have, how many kids they will impact, and how they are going to share the grant experience with other teachers in their school.
Growth Grant Committee Chairs then collect the applications, meet and evaluate the applications based on a specific rubric. The rubric has pre-established point systems and criteria to help with the grading. The grants are awarded to the top scoring applications.
Ellis said the Foundation awarded 26 grants last year for $43,500. She said they want to have more grant applications that score high on the rubric because they want to max out their $50,000 budget.