CSF Awards Over $14,000 in Grants
Chardon Schools Foundation is pleased to announce that as a result of its successful community auction event held in March, it has awarded over $14,000 in grants to Chardon Schools this year alone. CSF, a non-profit organization run by a small but mighty group of community volunteers, has helped fund creative and innovative educational grants to teachers in the Chardon Local School District since 1989.
The Foundation’s 2020 grants will enrich K-12 student educational experiences in a vast array of areas at all five Chardon schools, including literacy, interactive learning, community service, woodworking, music, agriculture, stress management, and forensic science in the 2020-21 school year and beyond.
Maple Kindergarten classroom libraries will be home to 50 new VOX nonfiction audio books, including titles from the Community Helpers, Insects Up Close, and Mighty Machines series. In addition, school libraries at both Munson Elementary and Park Elementary will grow virtually with the addition of over 250 licensed electronic-books, both fiction and nonfiction titles.
The Chardon Middle School teaching staff is already in full-swing with their CSF-funded subscription to Pear Deck, an interactive presentation tool that works in conjunction with Google Slides and is useful in many subject areas. Also at CMS, many hands will make for light funding work as CSF and Chardon Schools jointly sponsor a ceiling-mounted LCD projector for the CMS band/choir room.
For the Chardon High School campus, a joint funding endeavor by CSF and Chardon’s Sherwin-Williams will enable Chardon Service Learning students to build contemplation benches for their recently initiated community garden project located near the tennis courts.
CREW, the school’s newly launched Creating Reliable Educated Workers program for grade levels 9-12, is an industry-driven, work-based model designed to prepare students for the 4E’s they will encounter after graduation: Employment, Enrollment, Enlistment and/or Entrepreneurship. For a soft start to CREW’s agricultural initiative, students will be conducting a pilot greenhouse project using a hobby kit greenhouse funded by CSF.
In addition, CREW program students recently developed a vision for a dedicated soul sanctuary in their classroom, an idea stemming from their recent study of stress management. To support this student-led plan, CSF is funding a variety of items, including speakers, headphones, a room divider, stress balls, a Zen garden, motivational signs, coloring pages, and more.
CHS juniors and seniors enrolled in Forensic and Literary Crime Drama, a new course launched this fall by science teachers Holly Mihalek and Jill Carpenter, have the tools to create and re-enact crime scene scenarios and investigations and record scenarios and findings for peer project analysis. The CSF grant for the course covers the cost of classroom and forensics simulation kits, as well as small camcorders.
All project funding from CSF is made possible because of the Foundation’s strong base of community supporters, including sponsors, local businesses and individual donors.
Although CSF has a long-standing tradition of annual fundraisers, the Foundation has chosen to forgo certain fundraising events in 2020 and 2021 in response to the pandemic and the resulting social gathering restrictions and the understood economic impact on businesses.
Community members interested in supporting the organization’s mission during this time are encouraged to send a monetary donation to Chardon Schools Foundation, PO Box 838, Chardon, Ohio 44024 or online through CSF’s website at http://www.
Students Stock Little Free Food Pantry
When unseasonably warm weather was forecast for the first week of November, Chardon High School teacher Amanda Bunker knew she had the chance to plan for one more Therapeutic Thursday walking field trip for her class before the weather turned cold.
Among one of the class’ stops on Nov. 5 was the Little Free Food Pantry at 106 Water St. in Chardon. Mrs. Bunker’s students prepared in advance for the walking field trip by generously bringing non-perishable food donations to school.
With their food-filled wagon in tow, the class set off on their journey and enjoyed stocking the pantry, knowing the food they donated would help fellow community members in need.
The Little Free Food Pantry at 106 Water Street was completed during the 2018-19 school year as part of a Girl Scout Gold Award project by Denali Selent, then a senior at CHS.
CMS Exploring Adhesive and Cohesive Properties of Water
