Foundation continues support for schools

FREEHOLD - The Freehold Borough School District has been given a gift that will help scores of future students.

Jean Holtz, a member of the Freehold Borough Educational Foundation, recently announced the awarding of $10,000 worth ofmini-grants to school district staffmembers.

Since 2001, the foundation has presented awards totaling $64,000 to the school district to help pay for programs that are not covered by the regular school budget.

Holtz said grant chairwoman Lynn Reich and foundation members Gene Dougherty and Bill Barricelli helped to select the grant recipients. The foundation offers mini-grants up to $750 and collaborative grants up to $1,500.

"The foundation takes great pride in knowing that our efforts on behalf of the public school system in Freehold Borough have demonstrable results," Holtz said. "We are constantly amazed at the creativity and commitment of our teachers, at the response of our students, and the support of the administration in this regard."

Holtz said the 2008mini-grants include creative learning techniques to advance the children's use of new technologies, projects to help English language learners advance more quickly, programs to improve literacy and an initiative to implement community service projects.

Grants for the upcoming year include $750 for "Let's Give Back to Our Community," a program for the student council to plan, develop and implement a school-wide or community-wide service project.

According to the grant application, Park Avenue Elementary School basic skills teacher and student council adviser Dana Coseglio said this grant will help to buy supplies andmaterials needed for students to advertise their service projects and to create or buy anything they might need in order to complete them. Coseglio gave an example of making Valentine's Day cards for youngsters in a children's hospital to show how the grant might be used.

Paula Desch, an eighth grade humanities teacher at the Freehold Intermediate School, received a grant for $1,180 for "Building Success - One Student and One Book at a Time." This grant will help to build a nonfiction thematic library for her students so they can build their skills with material that is relevant, timely and interesting.

Desch's application stated that "research shows that independent reading, especially when students are provided with immediate feedback, promotes larger gains in skills in middle school students." She said students need access to the right books at the right time with the right support.

M

ary Anne Ills and Sarah Jacobson,

fifth-grade teachers at the Freehold Learning Center elementary school, will receive a $1,500 grant to implement their plan to enhance visual learning with a large screen projector for a computer monitor. Using this large screen projector will enhance a student's experiences and encourage integration of technology into many more curricular areas.

Susanne Peltzman and Diane Tennis, fifth grade teachers at the ParkAvenue Elementary School and the Freehold Learning Center, will be the recipients of a $1,500 mini-grant to all the fifth grade's gifted and talented pupils to once again participate in Marsville - a cooperative, hands-on learning experience sponsored by the Educational Information Resource Center.

The objective of this program is to help students learnmathematical and scientific information about Mars and Earth at the knowledge comprehension level, according to the application. Students will use this information to solve problem statements relating to conditions on Earth and conditions on Mars.

The students work in teams and will be assigned a life support system. They will research using the Internet, books and magazines to acquire factual information aboutMars and the systemthey have been assigned The systems are air supply, communications, food production and delivery, recreation, temperature control, transportation, waste management and water supply.

This program uses creative and critical problem solving skills and promotes higher order thinking and reasoning skills.

Freehold Intermediate School Principal Nelson Ribon applied for a grant to fund his program "Lights Camera, Action." The foundation made an exception, in terms of the amount, and granted Ribon $3,578 to create a student-driven newsroom and program using the technology currently in place through the school's Channel One.

Although Ribon only asked for $1,500 (the maximum amount of a collaborative grant) and said he would seek additional funding elsewhere, the foundation decided to fund the entire project.

"During the last two years the intermediate school has taken leaps and bounds into infusing technology into our instruction and student learning," Ribon wrote in his application. "With the assistance of grants, which we were fortunate to receive, our school now has over 150 laptops, a computer lab, LCD projectors in each class, interactive whiteboards in many classrooms as well as student response systems and PC tablets for the classroom teacher to use. One additional resource we have is the Channel One news broadcast equipment. We are now able to have a feed into most of our classrooms to broadcast their news program daily."

Ribon's proposal wants to take this technology one step further and have a student-driven newsroom and program using the technology currently in place through Channel One. This initiative would allow students opportunities to research, plan, direct and film the latest happenings at Freehold Intermediate School and the school communities and then broadcast them to all classrooms at least once per month and possibly more.

The budget for this project includes funds for a mini DV Camcorder, camera tripod, photoflood light kit, storage cabinet and wireless microphone.

Sandra Satten, a teacher at the Freehold Learning Center, will receive $633 to improve her Free Book Friday program.

"A few years ago Ms. Satten realized that many of her young readers were not reading at home, simply because they had no books to read," Holtz said. "She took it upon herself to begin collecting books from e-bay, garage sales, thrift stores etc. to solve the problem, allowing each child to take a book home on Friday. Her collection has grown considerably and this grant will provide her with storage cabinets for her 500-plus book collection."