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Gardening in our Schools
Provides entire elementary school buildings the opportunity to learn about and experiment with aeroponic gardens, a gardening system that does not use soil and instead uses a nutrient solution for roots. The CPSF grant provides one garden tower aeroponic system for each elementary school. The towers will be placed in school lobbies, media centers or cafeterias, all spaces where each student in the building gets to experience it.
Grant Funds Requested: $18,270
Ragtag Film Society Media Literacy Initiative
An initiative of the Ragtag Film Society, the umbrella organization of True/False Film Fest and Ragtag Cinema. The grant provides teachers with media literacy instructional strategies and materials and provides students with skills to be thoughtful, critical consumers of media. The grant funds will supplement Columbia Public Schools (CPS) core curriculum by providing screening rights for films and training for teachers to incorporate film into the classroom. Learning will be enhanced through extracurricular experiences, including year-round field trips to Ragtag Cinema for film screenings and a free film screening and filmmaker Q&A at the True/False Film Fest.
Grant Funds Requested: $114,300* over a three year period
Author Visits and Novels to Engage Middle School Readers
Supports literary initiatives at the middle school level impacting nearly 4,000 students. The selected young adult novels – which include Jason Reynolds’ “As Brave As You” and “Ghost,” and K.A. Holt’s “Rhyme Schemer,” “House Arrest” and “Red Moon Rising” – will be available in novel and audio format at each of the six CPS middle schools. In addition to supplying the novels, the grant provides for in-person author visits from both Reynolds and Holt at each middle school.
Grant Funds Requested: $20,000
