Crisp County schools awarded innovation grant

ATLANTA — The Crisp County School System has been awarded a $671,895 implementation grant for a literacy program for young students, Gov. Nathan Deal announced Wednesday.

Deal also announced a similar $669,000 grant for Clarke County schools and a $700,000 scaling grant for a personalized learning program in the Bibb County School System.

“The educators behind these programs are dedicated to piloting innovative approaches to education for use across the state,” Deal said. “I am confident these grants will provide schools and education groups with effective opportunities to transform educational experiences for many of Georgia’s students.

“Together, we will continue working to ensure that every student receives the tools necessary for academic achievement and lifelong success.”

Deal’s office said the implementation grants will provide each winner up to $700,000 over 2 1/2 years to pilot an innovative education program aligned with one of the Innovation Fund priority areas. Scaling grants provide each winner up to $700,000 over 2 1/2 years to scale a successful existing program to serve more students, teachers or leaders.

Both the Crisp and Clarke grants focus on language and literacy for ages birth to 8 years.

The Crisp schools’ program is titled Early SUCCESS: Strategies for Underserved Children, Community Engagement, and Social-emotional Support.

The program description notes the Crisp School System serves a rural, high-poverty community where 98 percent of students qualify for free and reduced-price lunch. The aim of the program is to disrupt traditional approaches to early literacy and social-emotional development through Early SUCCESS, which is designed to transform the traditional public-private silo approach to a cohesive, communitywide effort that system officials say they hope will impact every segment of the community. They say that includes home day care providers, private child care centers, Head Start, public school classrooms and families.

Crisp officials say Early SUCCESS will accomplish this goal by training both school system pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers, as well as other community child care providers, on evidence-based literacy and social-emotional development strategies.

In addition, Early SUCCESS will design a Mobile Family Literacy Center that officials say will bring literacy and social-emotional development resources directly to families.

Clarke County’s implementation grant will be used to establish a program called Pathway of Support: Trauma-Informed Care, while Bibb County will implement a scaling program at Westside High School titled Westside STEAM Magnet High School RTI-Based Personalized Learning Program.

The grantees will evaluate the effectiveness of their respective programs and submit findings to the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement. The state will use these findings to determine best practices in personalized and blended learning and birth-to-age-8 language and literacy development, the governor’s office said.

The grants come from the state’s Innovation Fund, which invests in public education entities that develop and scale programs that enable Georgia educators to improve student performance and tackle the state’s most significant education challenges. Since its inception in 2011, the Innovation Fund has invested more than $33 million of state and federal funding through 154 grants.