One hopes that the Cheney School District likes the color green, because they’ll be seeing a lot of it this upcoming school year.
Superintendent Rob Roettger announced at the Dec. 12 school board meeting that the district will be the recipient of a $1.92 million grant from the state STEM Capital Grants Program, which provides school districts with construction funds to build or modernize classroom spaces and labs.
Just seven districts across the state were awarded funds from the $10 million appropriated by the state Legislature for the program.
According to district documents, Cheney will be using the money to modernize and renovate several of its existing spaces. A classroom at Cheney High School will be remodeled for the expansion of a basic science course and the addition of a biomedical science course, while monies will also go toward renovating the school’s sports medicine classroom. The grant funds will place equipment in three computer science classrooms and furnish a material science and metal fabrication classroom.
It will also create a “makerspace” for teachers. A makerspace is a collaborative work space inside a school meant for making, learning, exploring and sharing creative tools ranging from Legos to 3-D printers.
The grant application was created in just a few weeks by Cheney High School’s business education teacher Adam Smith. Other districts receiving similar amounts include Everett and Kalama on the west side of the state.
Another grant for the district that is pending is for nearly $600,000 that goes toward a Safe Routes to School Program, a Washington State Department of Transportation initiative to improve conditions to encourage children to walk and bike to school.
While that amount is not 100 percent set in stone just yet, if the state funds education at the same level they have in previous years, Cheney will be able to make improvements to Sixth Street. The improvements would include work on sidewalks, curbs, ramps, crosswalk markings and would also extend the bike lane.
“That project is in partnership with the city of Cheney because we’ve been working on the grant with them,” Roettger said. “Of 118 requests, only 24 are anticipated to receive funding, and we’re one of them.”
Cheney School District also recently qualified for a grant designed to curb substance abuse among teens. The grant is funded from both federal and state sources and uses a unique two-pronged approach to combine efforts in schools and in the community.
The grant was highly competitive with 52 districts applying and just 18 awarded, and was primarily authored by Three Springs High School Principal Cathleen Schlotter with the Northeast Washington Educational Service District 101 serving as a fiscal agent on the application.
A portion of the grant will go to pay for a school-based prevention and intervention specialist. Cheney has had similar positions in the past. The job’s first year is paid for, but next year the district will have to pony up about $18,000 to keep it going.
Still, “$18,000 for two years is a really good deal,” Schlotter said, considering that the price tag is about a quarter of what a one-year position usually costs.
“It’s well worth it for the health of our kids,” newly-elected School Board President Stacy Nicols added.
About $110,000 in grant funds will go to pay for a community coordinator and coalition that will consult local residents and make a plan to combat substance abuse early on.
“In some school districts, they’ve done billboard campaigns, encouraging students to make the better choice, while some have sent kids to a leadership academy,” Schlotter said. “Some have purchased curriculum that would support students K-12 around choice making. I don’t know what our community will do with those funds, but at this point our plan is to get started.”
Cheney qualified based on the results of a Healthy Youth Survey, an anonymous assessment given to sixth, eighth, 10th and 12th-graders. The survey asked questions not only about their own experiences with substances but about outside contributing factors like their mental health, coping mechanisms and their friends and families opinion on substance abuse.
The data collected from the survey was combined with local data like incarceration rates and used to select districts that might benefit from the grant.
The 2016 survey revealed that 17.2 percent of 10th graders had used marijuana in the last 30 days, while 7 percent of 10th graders reported ever using a painkiller not prescribed to them.
“Ultimately, one of the things that I saw in the data that kids were pretty honest and did talk about their use, so we’re hoping to provide education and healthy opinions,” Schlotter said.
Cheney students took the survey again in the fall, but that data has not yet been released.
Shannen Talbot can be reached at [email protected].
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