Lexington County School District One Educational Foundation

Leap assistance - funds used from the Lexington emergency assistance program are designated to a leap crisis fund that offers financial and/or in-kind services to Lexington School District One permanent full-time employees, permanent part-time employees (not to include substitutes), and Lexington One students to assist them during a crisis such as a serious illness, natural disaster or financial hardship. The crisis must have occurred within the last 90 days. Services approved and paid for through these restricted funds could include medical bills, utilities, food, clothing and other expenses on the approved list. Leap pays funds directly to the place of business (i.e., directly to the hospital for covering a patient's medical bills) or makes awards in the form of gift cards (i.e., groceries) and will not award cash directly to an approved individual recipient. For the 2022-2023 fiscal year, leap funds exclude any payments for housing insurance, vehicle purchases/vehicle insurance, and security deposits. Also, worker's compensation recipients are ineligible for assistance. In addition, leap provided need-based international teacher grants.

Counting collections for mathematics grant - the goal of the counting collections for mathematics project is to improve the counting ability of students at an early age. The initiative will provide students with a Foundation in counting that will give them the confidence and flexibility they need to strengthen their counting skills, so that they can move from counting by ones to counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s, as this skill is required in the south carolina college and career-ready standards for mathematics. This grant project will impact approximately 315 k-2 teachers in Lexington District ones 17 elementary schools and almost 6,000 k-2 students. Teachers will be provided with books and materials to enhance their professional knowledge and implement instructional practices. Materials provided will be used to create counting buckets that the teachers can use to assess students counting abilities and increase their counting skills in a fun and engaging way. The Foundation awarded a 33,017 grant during fy 2023.

Foundation scholarships each have separate applications and criteria, but all fund Educational expenses for the recipients that may cover higher education expenses like tuition, room, board, or books. Checks are written to student's choice college or university and to the student, so that the higher education institution must credit the scholarship award to the student's college expenses. Scholarships of 14,000 were awarded for fiscal year 2023. Higher education support grants (formerly dorm room grants) are awarded annually to Lexington County School District One poverty-stricken seniors who are pursuing college and need financial assistance with the purchase of typical college expenses for their dorm rooms and/or tuition. Students must complete an application, including details of their financial situation, and be selected by a grant committee to receive a grant that can purchase items like sheet sets, comforter, towels, pillow, desk lamp, laptop, and other needed items to help ensure success in their future pursuits of higher education. 21 higher education support grants totaling 10,700, were awarded for fiscal year 2023.

The Foundation's board of directors awarded 6,750 in "bucks for books" grants to Lexington County School District One to support literacy efforts at the District's high schools. Accordingly, the grant was divided among five high schools to support 9th grade reading recovery and will help ensure that sc students graduate on time with the literacy skills they need to be successful in the future. Innovation grants for k-8 schools for fiscal year 2023 - grants of up to 5,000 each with a required 10% match were awarded to elementary and middle schools for Educational projects that address One or more of the District's pathways toward college, career and citizenship preparedness in innovative ways. In 2022-2023, funds provided grants for virtual & augmented reality instructional tools; steam bins for creating, collaborating and imagining; spike lego robots and tables to enhance stem learning; and games to develop critical-reasoning and communication skills, among other projects. The Foundation awarded 20,179 in innovation grants in fiscal year 2023. Robotics team grants were provided to a number of middle and high schools in order to fund the creation and/or expenses of robotics teams. These grants support education through providing students with opportunities to apply s.t.e.m. Learning to real life situations and competitions with other schools. The grant provided for a total of 10,000 to be disbursed among participating schools, as well as a few donor-targeted gifts to support vex worlds competition for qualifying teams. Michelin golden apple teacher grants provide grants up to 250 each to teachers to fund classroom needs that would not be available otherwise and enhance creativity and learning. Examples of projects funded included growing plants to teach life skills to special needs students; books to strengthen literacy skills; s.t.e.m. Kits to encourage creativity while learning; science kits to teach molecular genetics; spike lego robotics kits to teach engineering skills, and more. The Foundation awarded 5,173 in michelin golden apple teacher grants for fiscal year 2023. The Foundation provided additional assistance to Lexington County School District One for various programs totaling 28,895 for fiscal year 2023 that included homegrown institute grants to support teacher training and stem grants to the four computer science immersion elementary schools. The Foundation provided 19,132 in caring hearts grants and 7,849 in esol grants for fiscal year 2023. Other program services for fiscal year 2023 totaled 63,543. These represent salaries and benefits of 47,933, supplies of 6,384, purchased services of 1,800 and other objects of 7,426.