Schools Win Grants for Novel Programs

Providing administrators and teachers with a means to kick off innovative curriculum programs, the Los Angeles Unified School District has awarded more than $175,000 in federal grants to nine San Fernando Valley schools.

The Chapter II Innovative Grants--for a maximum of $25,000 each--are awarded to schools every other year. This year, about 100 schools or clusters of schools applied for the grants and 21 schools in the district won them.

According to the director of the district office that awards the grants, proposals are judged on their creativity and potential to improve student achievement.

“We look for good ideas that people have wanted to try,” said Donnalyn Jaque-Anton, director of the Learning Collaborative. “But they can’t just try something that is unfounded, there must be a solid research base for what they are doing.”

Roscoe Elementary, Carpenter Avenue Elementary, Haskell Elementary, Napa Street Elementary, Anatola Avenue Elementary, Northridge Middle School, Van Nuys Middle School, Taft High School and Cleveland High School all won grants ranging from $12,000 to $25,000.

At Roscoe Elementary in Sun Valley, administrators and teachers will use the $20,000 grant for training in the instructional technique known as the Scottish Story Line. It is a method that uses an integrated curriculum to encourage original student thinking by focusing subjects around a story line. Teachers, who are not confined by traditional grade-level restraints, will work together in mini-teams, transforming their classrooms along themes such as a historical site.

According to Ruth Bunyan, Roscoe’s principal, the method has not yet been implemented in any other district elementary school.

“As a LEARN school, we are out there on the cutting edge,” Bunyan said. “We keep reading that children in multi-grade settings achieve better. . . .The bottom line is that we want to improve our kids’ achievement.”

At Northridge Middle School, the $25,000 grant will be used for teacher training and materials to create a multicultural math/science program. Students will study those subjects from many cultural perspectives, focusing on contributions from Latin American, African and Asian scientists and mathematicians.