LIMESTONE — The Maine School of Science and Mathematics has been awarded a one-year $36,000 planning grant to start up a pilot program with two under-resourced middle schools in Maine.
MSSM and Educate Maine recently announced that the magnet school received the grant from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation (JKCF), a private independent foundation based in Lansdowne, VA. The foundation is dedicated to advancing the education of exceptionally promising students who have financial need, and recently awarded $500,000 in grants to six National Consortium of Specialized Secondary Schools (NCSSS) to assist in closing the excellence gap for academically talented students who hail from socioeconomically challenged backgrounds.
“We want to give students who are really smart an equal opportunity to succeed,” Harold Levy, executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, said. “Helping high-ability students with financial need fulfill their potential has significant implications for the social mobility among America’s lower-income families and for the strength of our economy.”
In February of this year, Luke Shorty, executive director of MSSM, along with other school leaders and experts from around the country, convened at a two-day summit hosted by JKCF to identify solutions to further close the excellence gap.
“In attending this conference with other specialized secondary schools from across the country, I was inspired to provide a proposal to help close the excellence gap here in Maine by partnering with Educate Maine and utilizing Maine’s MLTI (Maine Learning Technology Initiative) program to improve middle school STEM [science, technology, education, mathematics] education,” Shorty said. “The $36,000 will be used to complete a planning year for the pilot program.”
In the next year, MSSM will identify and partner with at least two under-resourced middle schools in rural Maine and pilot a distance education science/mathematics curriculum similar to the successful traits found in the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics’ online program.
Ed Cervone, Educate Maine’s executive director, said, “Educate Maine and its business partners are thrilled to be a part of this great work with MSSM. This is an opportunity to take the knowledge and high-quality curriculum at one of the state’s best schools and share it beyond its walls.
“This will help more Maine students be prepared to succeed in college. It will also enhance their career aspirations and will provide them with opportunities to reach their full potential,” Cervone said.
The grant will be paid in one installment beginning this month and will run from June 1, 2015-May 31, 2016.
