LYNNFIELD — The Lynnfield Educational Trust (LET) announced $18,000 in grants recently, the most funding the group has given Lynnfield Public Schools educators in its 30-year history.
Co-Presidents Kathryn Price and Erin Howard have been leading the group for around two years now and have already funded $26,000 in projects this year.
“LET was founded to essentially fund innovative projects that either fell outside the standard curriculum or, typically, outside the operating budget of the Lynnfield Public Schools,” Price said. “The structure has always been that educators in the district were able to apply twice a year and propose different projects, and the group works together to select what they could fund.”
For this round of grants, LET has chosen five projects across all levels of town schools to fund, including $8,998 for virtual reality headsets, what the group is calling its first-ever “mega-grant,” a one-time allocation for a tool every student in the district will benefit from.
Lynnfield Public Schools already has 32 VR kits being used in schools for educational experiences, which transport students to historic locations like Anne Frank’s house or visit King Richard III’s house. With LET’s help, 16 more kits will be available for students to use.
“The teachers, our advisory board, and then Heather Koleszar, who proposed the project, did a really compelling job of sharing how these headsets are currently used,” Price said. “Those of us on the board with children in the district, we’ve actually even heard about these from our own kids.”
Other projects LET is funding include a $3,427.21 grant for a “Chill Zone” in the Huckleberry Hill Elementary School where students can take sensory breaks, a $750 mental health lending library that will be stocked with informative resources by counselors at the middle school, a $2,022.20 two exercise bike work stations at the Summer Street School media center to help kids focus, and $1,500 for a wall oven to be used to teach life skills at the high school.
“The idea with that is they’re also going to be making baked goods to sell in a student-run coffee cart that they already maintain and that we donated to,” Price said. “So that was kind of cool to see the next chapter of that project.”
These types of sustainable projects, which touch many different students in the district and are connected to their teaching, are exactly what the LET looks for, Price says.
The two application cycles end in October and then in February and are open to everyone employed by the district. They are then reviewed by Price and Howard, along with Director of Grants Karen Panos and Treasurer Lauren Kayola.
“We are really lucky because we have an advisory committee of teachers, so we have representation from all schools and levels, and then we also have a health and wellness liaison and a special services liaison,” Price said. “They’re the point of contact for each grant proposer. They will be the expert on the application, but they also will discuss with us their perspective on alignment with the mission of the district.”
Funding for the past few years has been taken from an investing account, but the LET has recently restarted fundraising events like a spelling bee in January, where they raised $9,500, a testament to the community support the trust has.
“I taught public school for a number of years in a different district, and I was a person who received grants, and I always just appreciated that. It was an opportunity to be inspired or creative in my teaching, and have the funding to do that,” Price said. “It’s exciting to see what people are doing to innovate, and it feels like a really positive thing to be a part of, which is nice.”
