By Laura Hammack, guest columnist
Brown County Schools was just awarded another incredible gift from the Lilly Endowment Inc. through their Comprehensive Counseling Initiative for Indiana K-12 Students Implementation Grant.
Our district was selected, along with 51 other public school corporations and five charter schools across the state, to receive these grant dollars to develop a best practice comprehensive counseling model that effectively addresses the academic, college, career and social and emotional counseling needs of our students.
We are excited to have been selected for this competitive grant, as 254 school corporations and charter schools applied for funding. Being one of the 51 school corporations selected, we are committed to ensuring that the grant dollars are deployed in a strategic way to make a lifelong impact on the boys and girls we serve.
This grant award will bring $192,800 to Brown County Schools. In order to determine the direction that this grant application would take, a survey needs assessment was conducted with a variety of stakeholders. Focus groups also were conducted to better understand the needs assessment data and to strategically define the action steps in the grant application.
Therefore, we feel it is necessary to thank the community for their support of this grant application. We received a variety of letters of support from local service groups, our Brown County Community Foundation and community leaders. Many community members also offered their feedback within the needs assessment survey and during focus groups. Once again, the community of Brown County proved we were ready to receive these grant dollars. We are primed to deploy them with fidelity.
Mrs. Debbie Harman, our director of student learning, took the lead on submitting this grant application and did an absolutely fantastic job of telling our story. The grant application identified a need for expanded counseling services for students, the addition of a social and emotional learning curriculum, the implementation of the Naviance college and career readiness software platform, and an expansion of the Check & Connect student engagement intervention model.
Within the grant application, Mrs. Harman told several stories that came directly from the halls of our schools. I found one to be particularly poignant.
“During a reading intervention lesson with a fourth-grader at one of our elementary schools, a teacher encouraged a little girl to practice her reading because she would “need to read a lot when you go to college one day.” The little girl did not respond as one might guess. She did not sit up tall, pull the book in closer, or touch her finger to the text. Instead she slouched in her chair, shook her head, looked up at the teacher and said, “It doesn’t matter. I am not ever going to college. We can’t afford it.”
This student needs access to a college readiness curriculum, a strategy for monitoring potential scholarship eligibility, and a plan for training her teachers and family about learned optimism. This grant will provide us with expanded resources to transition this need into an accomplishment.
We are excited to report to the community on the success stories that are realized because of this grant funding. The Lilly Endowment Inc. has blessed this school district and our community in an immeasurable way and continues to make a substantial impact.
We are so grateful to have been selected for this honor and promise to make these dollars translate into lifelong impact!
Laura Hammack is superintendent of Brown County schools. She can be reached at [email protected] or 812-988-2221.
