Adams 12 Five Star Schools receives STEM grant

Adams 12 Five Star Schools will get a small reprieve from this year’s severe budget cuts.

The district will receive a portion of the $17.9 million Race to the Top federal grant awarded to Colorado.

Joe Ferdani, the Adams 12 communications director, said the total allocation from the state’s Department of Education to Adams 12 Five Star Schools for Race to the Top is $292,243, which will be doled out over four years, beginning with an allocation this month

Ferdani said the grant money will be used to hire part-time STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) coordinators in four schools, Bollman Technical Education Center, Northglenn High School, STEM Lab and STEM Launch, which is slated to open in August.

He said the coordinators will help integrate STEM content across the curriculum in a way that will help students apply concepts in those subject areas by solving real-world challenges. The program is estimated to reach about 2,000 students in the district.

Race to the Top, a federal initiative launched in 2009, is providing $4.35 billion in federal grants in an effort to boost education-reform efforts in public schools.

In December 2011, the U.S. Department of Education announced Colorado was one of seven states to receive a portion of $200 million in Race to the Top funding allocated by Congress in 2010. Colorado was not accepted in either of the first two rounds of grant funding in 2010 and 2011.

The state Department of Education then opened the “Race to the Top 3” application process to school districts in February.

Districts applying for the funding could align their work to one of three area: standards and assessment, educator effectiveness or STEM initiatives.

School district award amounts were based on the district’s number of economically-disadvantaged students.