Jamestown School District receives $1M state grant

Jamestown School District was selected to receive a $1 million grant through the California Community Schools Partnership Program in a “highly competitive” process against more than 100 school districts throughout the state that submitted applications for funding.

There was a total of $45 million available from the program, with Jamestown School District being one of 20 chosen for a grant. All 100-plus applications combined totaled more than $165 million in funding requests, said Daniel Harrison, director of the Jamestown Family Resource Center, which is part of the district.

“To compete with big city schools like Los Angeles Unified and San Diego Unified and to be recognized and valued in this way really reinforces what we’ve been doing and to continue doing that,” he said in a phone interview Monday. “It shines a light on what we’ve been doing for many years.”

The grant was made available through the state Department of Education in October and applied to schools that fall under the program’s definition of a “community school,” the tenets of which include providing integrated health services, engaging with families and community partners, traumainformed practices, and before and after school activities.

Harrison said the district has been implementing the te

nets outlined in the grant program since at least his children were attending during the 1990s.

“It was tailor made for us,” he said.

The funding, which will be given to the district over a three years, will be used to help strengthen and expand its current efforts at serving its students not only academically, but also socially and emotionally, according to a news release announcing the grant.

Harrison said his center will provide support for the district and has already been surveying families to see what needs are still unmet and what new needs might have arisen due to the pandemic, as well as working with partner agencies that include the county Sheriff’s Office, Superintendent of Schools, the Amador-tuolumne Community Action Agency, and Infant/ Child Enrichment Services, also known as ICES.

“We want to continue growing those relationships,” he said.

One use for the funding that’s being looked at is potentially working with the Sheriff’s Office to bring a dedicated school resource officer on campus, which Harrison said the district has lacked for some years. He said they are also looking at bringing on an additional school counselor.

About 77% of the roughly 340 students enrolled in the district from transitional kindergarten and kindergarten through eighth grade are eligible for free or reduced lunches, which is typically used as a barometer for a school’s socioeconomic demographics.

“I can’t speak to the other schools in the area, but I know that we’re a depressed community with a low tax base and not a lot of money coming in to support education,” Harrison said.

The release said the district will be working with support from the center to develop community collaborative bringing together local government agencies and community groups with a common philosophy and varied areas of expertise, which can include counseling services, foster care. educational opportunities, transportation, food resources, digital connectivity and technology, and before and after school care.

District Superintendent Contessa Pelfrey also expressed excitement about the prospect of what they can accomplish with the additional funding.

“We have so many wonderful programs that we are proud of, yet we have some areas of need to address,” she said in the news release. “This grant will allow us to build upon our strengths and to create a greater depth of resources in order to better serve our school community.”