Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Teachers win grants from school foundation
SILOAM SPRINGS — Rhonda Asencio understands language barriers are common in Siloam Springs schools as a teacher of English as A Second Language classes.
“So I’m teaching them English,” Asencio said. “But the core teachers have a hard time teaching content. I get questions all the time. ‘How do I teach them when we can’t communicate?”’
Asencio was on a Facebook group for education professionals where she heard about translation headphones that produce sound in the language of the wearer while the teacher instructs the class in English.
Asencio applied for a grant from the Siloam Springs Public School Foundation and was awarded $1,500.
Ten certified staff members were awarded grants that totaled $11,000. Grants were delivered by foundation board member Randy Torres to all the professionals in their classrooms Dec. 18.
“There were a few people in town who were aware of other foundations in other communities that did this kind of work,” said Chuck Hyde, foundation board member.
People had brought the matter of foundation grants to Hyde’s attention. When he joined the board the idea was introduced and the board set out to acquire funds, Hyde said.
The board identified a few donors that were approached for the new stadium project and introduced the idea, Hyde said.
Donors included Alternative Design, La-Z-Boy, Milestone Construction and John Brown University as well as three different families, Hyde said.
The goal was to raise $15,000. The board ended up with $16,000.
The board formed a committee to evaluate applications, Hyde said.
“We had adopted a rubric from another district in Texas that we had a relationship with that has this,” Hyde said. “It looked at everything from the learning objectives, the student population that was impacted, the budget and how the resources were spent and things like that.”
Applicants were required to answer those questions, Hyde said. Along with the committee’s review, the school district had to review the applications to ensure requests were in line with district strategies.
Recipients will be required to submit a report at the end of the semester about their progress, Hyde said.
Amanda Ward, principal of the district’s alternative learning education division, wanted to build a maker space and outdoor movement area for her students. She received $1,170.
“This grant money is going to allow me to transform that library to where it’s like part library, part maker space and the kids are going to have a Lego wall,” Ward said.
The outdoor movement area was added because there is not a traditional playground at the Siloam Springs Middle School where the division is housed, Ward said.
Mental-health therapist Angela Brown saw a need to help parents and their children hone their relationships through play therapy. Brown received $1,276 to form a play therapy group for parents and children.
“I think in our schools we’re seeing some behaviors on the rise,” Brown said. “When we would call parents they would tell us, ‘I don’t know what to do, I don’t have the skill or I don’t know how to handle this.”’
Brown thought about what could be done to help parents in this area and she came up with the idea of doing a low-key play therapy program at the Panther Health and Wellness Clinic.
“It’ll be a group of five parents together,” Brown said. “They’ll learn how to kind of do the therapy with their children and learn how to limit-setting and some discipline techniques and just some skills that maybe if they have a child that struggles with behavior.”
The hope for the foundation is to offer more grants next year, Hyde said. The board is going to evaluate the process at the end of the semester to ensure everything went smoothly.
During the 2023 spring semester, the Fayetteville Public Education Foundation offered standard grants up to $10,000 as well as the Pendergraft Grant for $25,000, according to fayefoundation.org.
In 2022, the Rogers Public Education Foundation gave out $105,127 in grants, according to the foundation’s website.
“The other districts started small, kind of like we did,” Hyde said. “And now they’re way down the road and doing a significant amount of work. We see that we could be potentially on a similar kind of trajectory.”