SANDPOINT — Panhandle Alliance for Education has funded 42 out of their 72 project proposals for Lake Pend Oreille School District’s 2020-2021 school year.

“What we try to do is encourage teachers to do something extraordinary in their classroom,” Executive Director Marcia Wilson said. “In other words we want to inspire them to be innovative, creative, to think outside of the box, to make the projects really interesting to students so they enjoy learning and have a memorable experience.”

Nine committee members are tasked with judging grant applications by a comprehensive rubric scale. There are three main criteria points for determining the success of a project — projects that are meaningful, measurable over time and have academic merit.

The project with the highest score this year belonged to Karin Beno’s Southside Eagle’s project from Southside Elementary School, where students will study birds of prey. The curriculum will have a special focus on the American bald eagle, the school’s mascot, and there will be a cluster of presentations, field trips, engineering kits and art mural projects to give students a chance to connect with their North Idaho roots.

“They actually get to meet birds of prey and they are studying what they eat, how they fly and the environment they live in,” Wilson said. “It got the highest number of points because it really embraces where we live and what we hold near and dear here in regards to wildlife and natural beauty. We love our wide open spaces, our clean air, we have a very large lake, we have mountains and we want our kids to really value it.”

Beno’s project received the The Glass Slipper Award for Innovation, one of the four special grant awards this year. PAFE grant awards have a $10,000 maximum and one teaching grant typically costs about $2,000. Wilson said PAFE awarded $110,000 worth of grants for teachers and they have begun strongly encouraging Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) based projects to prepare graduates for the future trajectory of employment opportunities. Anywhere from 10 to 15 percent of their approved projects are in support of a STEM curriculum, although the most popular project requests involve learning.

“We provide every first grader that comes into the school district with a lucky puppy, it’s a little stuffed dog and the students get to pick their own puppy,” Wilson said. “They are black or brown and the students get to name them and the stuffed puppy becomes their nonjudgmental reading partner and when the student reads a certain number of books to their puppy, they get a prize, like a dog collar or a dog bed and the opportunity to take the puppy home and show their family their puppy. This program has become so valuable, their reading is off the charts.”

Lori Bopp, who submitted this project for first grade students called Learning with Lucky, also received one of the four special grant awards called The Lesley Goffinet Award for Literature. The other two special grant awards were The Betty Ann Diehl Award for Arts and Music, which was awarded to Amy Stephensen at Clark Fork Junior/Senior High School for their grant called Music Matters and The Dave and Laurie Wall for Math and Science award to Patrick Lynch at Sandpoint Middle School for the Knotworking and Mechanical Advantage project. Stephensen plans to partner with The Music Conservatory of Sandpoint to continue the choir and performing arts programs at the school. With Lynch’s grant, the students in his class will use static ropes, pulleys, slings and carabiners to demonstrate their understanding of mechanical advantage and applied knot working to efficiently move and lift heavy objects.

The teacher grant awards program has continued since 2005 and has been a critical source of education funding for schools in LPOSD. Although Idaho spends over 65 percent of their state budget on education, it continues to rank the lowest for receipt of education funds. Through PAFE, Bonner County residents have been able to show their support for education and raise millions of dollars for projects that benefit both the growth and longevity of teachers and students during their time in the school system.

“I just really love working with teachers and helping them be the best they can be,” Wilson said. “And what we lack in funding our teachers make up for in commitment.”

In addition to the teacher grant awards, PAFE is funding teacher transportation cost and training cost to participate in summer professional learning communities to encourage a collaborative teaching model between schools. Wilson said PAFE had received so many requests for teachers to participate in these communities through the grant process that they have gone ahead and paid for this program through the school district.

PAFE is also providing an additional $100,000 this year for social emotional support in response to COVID-19.

“There are a lot of people unemployed here and that can make homelife pretty difficult for students and we want to make sure that if there are social emotional needs, they have extra funding to help with that,” Wilson said. “We are also providing some scholarships for students to get a really good head start. We’d like to make sure students have access to full day kindergarten, we just don’t have enough funding to do that without outside help and so that’s something that’s really important to us and then also these professional learning communities to really work together as a team and understand the needs of the students”

For more information or to submit a donation for Panhandle Alliance for Education, go online to panhandlealliance.org.

Aly De Angelus can be reached by email at adeangelus@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @AlyDailyBee.