Contributed GRANTS PRESENTED — Southern Local School District accepts three Best Practices Grants from the Jefferson County Educational Service Center. The grant dollars will go to projects benefitting preschoolers through high schoolers. From left, front, are Kip Dowling; board President Scott Hart; Frank Shagnot; Jean Pastore; and board Vice President John Sawyer; back, JCESC Curriculum Director Ron Sismondo; teachers Jessica Coleman, Tracey Richards and Tiffany Scheel; Superintendent Tom Cunningham; and district Treasurer Greg Sabbato.

SALINEVILLE — From running their first business to learning the building blocks of literacy, the oldest and youngest students in the Southern Local School District are enjoying new opportunities with the help of Best Practices Grants from the Jefferson County Educational Service Center.

The board of education accepted three grants of $700 each during its Nov. 11 meeting.

Ron Sismondo, JCESC director of curriculum, recognized the educators.

“Congratulations to those three and to your great teaching staff,” he said.

Jessica Coleman is a prior JCESC grant recipient, when the grant allowed her to start a sensory area in the elementary school. Now at the high school, she and her life skills and career-based intervention students have kicked off the Wigwam Cafe to serve hot and iced coffee and other beverages and snack items. Her students have taken the lead, building a range of skills including handling money and customer service and customer relations.

Meanwhile, Tiffany Scheel at the junior/senior level of high school accepted a grant to bring in new math tools with 24 Ways to Think: A Math Fluency and Strategy Project.

Scheel said the 24 game cards are reusable and adaptable across grade levels, with lasting benefits for classroom instruction and enrichment.

At the elementary school, Tracey Richards was awarded a grant for her project to enhance language and literacy among preschoolers. She has added oral language and phonological awareness activity bundles and sounds and letters activity bundles to her students’ classwork. Activities included in her project are alphabet trains, rhyming games, and storytelling boxes.