Foundation’s impact felt throughout district
A once-unused space on the grounds of Michael Griffin Elementary School in Katy is now a teaching garden often teeming with pupils who use it to study math, science and even English.
When the school year starts Aug. 24 for the Katy Independent School District, the garden, known as the MGE Outdoor Habitat and Learning Lab, will enter its third year. Just under 1,000 Griffin pupils in kindergarten through fifth grade are expected to plant and harvest produce from its garden beds and study creatures that live within its habitat.
The program is an example of how the three-year-old nonprofit Katy ISD Education Foundation assists the district by funding programs not provided for through the district’s budget. Other efforts that have received funding through the foundation include a Morton Ranch High School program in which students wrote their autobiographies and published books and a monthly afterschool program at Hayes Elementary School in which girls conduct science experiments.
The garden effort is a twotime recipient of the foundation’s Inspiring Imagination Grants awarded to Katy ISD educators; it received $5,000 for the 2013-14 school year and another $4,000 for the upcoming school year.
Almost $500,000 in grants
The foundation works independently of the school district to provide resources for teachers that allow them to enhance learning opportunities. It has given almost $500,000 in teacher grants since it was founded. In the first two years of operation, the foundation’s grants have impacted half of Katy ISD’s 72,000 students, said Janet Theis, director of community partnerships at Katy ISD and administrative liaison to the foundation.
The foundation’s 45-member board “decided our primary focus would be on teacher grants,” Theis said. “They saw that as the best way to reinvest resources into Katy ISD classrooms.”
Funding the ideas of teachers, she said, gives them the opportunity to try new ways of engaging children. Money garnered by the foundation through annual fundraisers and capital campaigns allows principals and teachers to go beyond what the district’s budget would ordinarily provide.
“A lot of people think school districts’ budgets can cover all of the needs of classrooms, and that is not the case,” Theis said. “Any individual campus’ budget is limited, certainly with the size of our campuses out here in Katy and the number of staff and classrooms that are supported.”
The Michael Griffin Elementary Outdoor Habitat and Learning Lab was the brainchild of Samira Hassan, a fifth-grade science teacher at Griffin. She worked with other teachers in writing the grant request.
Hassan began teaching at the campus in 2006 and developed the idea several years before the foundation was established. At the time, money wasn’t available to fund the campus gardening program, she said.
The project remained but an idea until 2012 when the foundation was created and announced its grant program. Since that first funding award, the garden program has been used by almost every student at Griffin.
“Griffin sees the project as a long-term investment that will be used by teachers and students year after year,” Theis said.
Located at the back of the Griffin campus between the third- and fourth-grade wings are garden beds assigned to each grade level for fall and spring planting. Throughout the year, various plants, fruits and vegetables are grown.
An ecosystem representing the prairie that once covered the Katy area has also been created on the grounds.
Another area includes drought-tolerant plants that can attract wildlife such as rabbits, and another is a haven for butterflies to allows pupils to watch the insects progress from the larval stage. The garden also has a composting area and a spot destined for simulated archeological excavations.
“This program definitely would not have been achievable without the Katy education foundation,” Hassan said.
Corraling resources
It took more than the initial $5,000 from the foundation to start the campus garden but that money served as a catalyst. The school’s PTA contributed $3,000, which allowed Hassan to pay for cement for sidewalks and a pad under the garden’s shed plus an iron fence with gates that enclose the habitat section.
“I knew that $8,000 still wouldn’t afford me everything that I planned to build; so I started looking into other grants that were available in the same time frame,” she said.
She secured a $2,500 grant from the Texas Department of Agriculture’s Urban Schools Agricultural Grant Program and a $50 grant for seeds from the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center.
The Katy Prairie Conservancy partnered with the project and provides resources as well as plant identification expertise when vegetation sprouts. Area retailers also got on board by offering what Hassan called “deep discounts.” Her team of fifthgrade teachers also put funds together earned from a health-and-fitness fundraiser to purchase plant identification signs.
The foundation grant earned for the upcoming school year, Hassan said, is covering items initial funds couldn’t, including the planned archeological dig pit, additional compost tumblers and birdhouses for purple martins, a North American swallow.
Hassan said pupils connect to their studies while in the garden doing maintenance tasks.
“As a science teacher, it is easy to see the connections made,” Hassan said. “We can go out for a lesson on consumers, producers and decomposers and have kids find each of the classifications or organisms. We can ponder why there are so many producers and so few consumers and tie that into the idea of energy flow through ecosystems.”
This fall, fifth-grade pupils will take part in a farm-to-table lesson and a harvesting and tasting event. They will collect seasonal produce and wash, separate, bag and label the vegetables and till garden beds for spring planting. Last fall, students took vegetables to the campus kitchen and watched Hassan turn carrots, cabbage, bok choy and snow peas into a stir-fry dish. They also got to taste fresh vegetables such as daikon radish, beets and spinach.
“Even the most hardened non-vegetable eater gave it a try and was surprised by how tasty fresh picked organic vegetables can be,” Hassan said. “We discuss the differences between growing your own produce and buying it from the store, figuring out how many steps in the farm-to-market process we skip when we are the farmers and when we are the consumers.”
Some students have become advocates for gardening, she said, and take seeds harvested at the school to plant at home. Others have brought in plants from home to share at school.
As an educator, Hassan said, receiving the grants for the campus garden project was validation that others believed in her vision.
She isn’t the only Katy ISD educator to benefit from the education foundation’s grant program. Since it started, the foundation has funded dozens of other programs at schools across the district.
Students’ stories
Morton Ranch High School students took part in a program called “100 Stories Told,” during which students wrote their autobiographies and published books. The grant funded publication of the books.
“The teacher actually told me that she had that idea for about five years, and the budget funds had never been there to support it,” Theis said.
Foundation grants have funded science lab equipment at junior high and high school campuses. Those were items the school district just couldn’t afford, Theis said.
Another program that has received grant money two years in a row is the GEMS Club at Hayes Elementary School. GEMS, which stands for “Girls Excelling in Math and Science,” is a monthly afterschool program that provides participants the opportunity to conduct hands-on experiments.
“History Speaks Volumes” is a program at Hutsell Elementary School. Two teachers have combined curriculum and teach about 40 students in an interactive instructional environment. Theis said the program has improved student attendance and grades.
Another round of grants was issued before summer vacation. The foundation awarded more than $220,000 to 180 teachers at 30 Katy ISD campuses. Funds will be spent when the school year begins.
The foundation plans to award at least $250,000 in Katy ISD teacher grants for the 2016-17 school year. Applications will open Nov. 1 and are due around April 1 for selection.
To learn how to contribute to the foundation, visit www.katyisdeducationfoundation.org.