The Milpitas Community Education Foundation (MCEF) awarded forensics science and Advanced Placement (AP) chemistry teacher Letta Meyer $3000 for her forensics science class, and chemistry and biotech teacher Robert Alvelais $500 for Science Olympiad.
Curtner Elementary School teachers Naomi Patner, Natalie Tice, and Mary Paek recieved $2000 for their Sowing Creativity initiative during the Oct. 24 MUSD school board meeting.
Meyer was excited and grateful when receiving the grant, she said. She applied for the grant to get funding for the hands-on activities of her forensics science class, which uses materials like fingerprint lifting tape and hair samples, she added. “It’s a good class that allows for access for everybody to science and really seeing how science is applied,” Meyer said. School funding hasn’t been enough to cover the costs of these hands-on activities, Meyer said. “The school funding is not as robust,” Meyer said.
In her proposal, Patner and her colleagues wrote an essay on how the Sowing Creative initiative aligns with the district’s strategic goals, Patner said. The initiative would bring resident artists from the San Jose State Museum to Curtner Elementary School to teach three fourth-grade classrooms, Patner added.
“Art is an integral component of the curriculum, but it’s really hard to do it well when you’re a jack-of-all-trades or jill-of-all-trades as an elementary school teacher,” Patner said.
Each class in the Sowing Creativity program costs $720, and the grant was only applicable if the initiative impacted an entire grade level of the school, Patner said. The total cost of the program was $2160, so the remaining $160 not covered by the grant would need to be funded by Curtner’s Parent Teacher Association, she added.
“I just didn’t expect (the grant),” Patner said. “It was a shock when I was informed and we were told that we needed to come to the board meeting the following Tuesday. It was like a whirlwind and very exciting and unexpected.”
MCEF founder Robert Jung started the organization in 2009 as an endowment that could financially support quality public education in the district, he said. The endowment was in response to the 2008 recession that caused classes and programs to be cut due to insufficient funding, he added. “The biggest program that was cut was music, and the community was not very happy about that,” Jung said. Through secure investments in bank notes and CDs, donations from banks like Wells Fargo, and fundraising, the endowment reached its goal of $100,000 by 2018, Jung said.
MCEF hopes to double the amount to $200,000 by June 2024 to increase the grant to $10,000, Jung said.
“As we grow the organization, we would love to be able to help the district become the strongest in our county,” Jung said. MCEF’s annual grant applications are due on Sep. 30 of each year, and winners are evaluated and selected by a grant committee in October, Jung said.
In April of the following year, awardees make a presentation or infographic that is posted on the MCEF website, Jung added. “This is meant as a seed for the community to really own this particular organization, to commit to public education for the future for our kids,” Jung said.