VALIER — The Valier School is receiving part of a $1.25 million grant in order to improve reading and test scores among its students.
The state considered several factors when determining which schools are eligible for the Montana Reads Literacy Grant.
Tommy Lynch reports from Valier - watch:
Superintendent and Principal of the Valier School Joshua Reed said, “What are your free reduced lunch numbers, what are your scores like, and that just gets you on that list to go ahead and be eligible.”
Reed says that the Valier School has been on the list for a few grant cycles due to their reading and writing scores, but this is the first time they formally applied.
Reed said, “It is a lot of work, right? And not everybody thinks, not everybody's comfortable with grant writing.”
This year, the Valier School was one of multiple rural Montana schools to be selected.
Reed said, “For that first year in total, that'll be $185,000 to go ahead and spend.”
That is nearly an additional ten percent of the school’s budget the first year, which will be used to expand summer school, offer an afterschool program, and hire a full-time reading interventionist.
Reed said, “We have so many kids in K through third grade who are, slightly below or significantly below reading levels. And we know that if that persists past their grade, it's likely to persist the rest of their lives.”
The grant was written by Paige Anteau, who did not initially expect it to be accepted.
Anteau, a teacher at the Valier School said, “It was a competitive grant supposedly. That's what we were told, at least.”
However, nearly 40 pages and multiple months later, that wasn’t the case.
Anteau said, “I was a little surprised, actually. We're so small here that I thought they were going to kind of prioritize grants from other districts.”
They believe this is only the beginning, as they will continue to search for more grants in the future.
Anteau said, “Everybody's kind of seeing the positive effects of this already. There's a lot of excitement and energy to get some of the programs in the grant going.”
The grant will provide finances for five years, each year slightly decreasing funds in order to promote self-sufficiency.
