The Bright Ideas Grants (BIG) program promotes equity and excellence in classroom experiences that excite young minds and stimulate learning beyond what some school budgets allow. These classroom enrichment grants are awarded to teachers or public schools in Fayette County to bring innovative ideas, concepts, or practices to life, or expand past successful ideas in the classroom or school.
| School/Department | Project Title | Description |
| Arlington Elementary – Becky Blanton | Reading Level through Literacy Footprints | Assessment kits to help identify instructional and independent reading levels for students to target instruction. |
| Booker T. Washington Elementary – Jennifer Baker | STEM Activities for Preschool | Developmentally appropriate preschool STEM materials. |
| Cassidy Elementary – Elisabeth Darce | Literacy Footprints, Enhancing Guided Reading | Guided reading system designed to teacc primary children to read and write. |
| Coventry Oak Elementary – Veronica Boller | STEM Sewer Solutions for our Community | STEM tools to design potential solutions to sewer problems and participate in community awareness initiatives. |
| District-wide: Student/Family Transition Support and Dropout Prevention | Mentoring and Leadership Conference | The conference will celebrate and motivate a generation of future leaders with a focus on boys of color. |
| Eastside Technical Center – Lisa Rudzinski | VR for All | Virtual reality program to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of our special populations while enhancing their career and technical education experience. |
| District-wide: Family and Community Engagement Office | Violence Awareness and Prevention Project | Collaborative project with community and school-level partners to bring anti-violence programming to our Title 1 schools. |
| Frederick Douglass HS – Tracy Bolinger | Happy Medium: Teen Perspectives | Student led discussion about relevant issues to work on active listening and increasing capacity to process and evaluate information presented from two differing points of view |
| Garden Springs Elementary – Kathleen Kiely | Lego Spike Prime Kits | Kits engage students to think critically and solve complex problems and help students learn the essential STEAM and 21st century skills needed to become the innovative minds of tomorrow. |
| Garden Springs Elementary – Kim McClure | Re-Write Tablets | Reusable writing tablet that requires no dry erase markers and uses a stylus for first graders. |
| Jessie Clark Middle School – Troy Chafin | Project F.I.E.R.C.E | Empower students to be successful, contributing members of society by applying current curriculum knowledge to real world financial applications in a club setting. |
| Lexington Traditional Magnet School – Lolita Cartwright | M&M Mondays | Mindfulness and Meditation Mondays will help students to increase focus, self-control, classroom participation, and compassion. |
| Mary Todd Elementary – Marisol Valles and Michael Jones | International/LatinX Dance Team | A dance team to celebrate students’ heritage and culture, music and the traditions of the various countries represented by our large, rich diverse LatinX and immigrant student population. |
| Mary Todd Elementary – Amanda Campbell | Scholastic Storyworks WORKS | Supplemental curriculum to help our teachers use materials that are engaging and better aligned to the updated state standards. |
| Mary Todd Elementary – Ashley Yazell and Michael Jones | Vex Robotics | Robotics club to expose students to critical thinking, math, engineering and problem solving abilities in a school that serves a very diverse group of students that are under-represented in the STEM field. |
| Rise STEM Academy for Girls – Kristen Witt | Building and Coding Robots | Scholars will work together to build a mindstorm robot. Then, they will learn to code their robot through mazes and to complete different actions. |
| Rise STEM Academy for Girls – Craig Schroeder | Harnessing Solar Energy | Explore the concepts of potential and kinetic energy, solar energy, the greenhouse effect, and salinity through investigation, designing, building and testing as well as creation of a public service announcement. |
| SCAPA – Julie Moore | Engineering Gardening Solutions | Project-based learning experience where students will be designing and 3D printing elements,to enhance our school’s gardening as well as researching and working within a budget. |
| Tates Creek HS – Joe Jenkins | Gear Book Club | Book club in which students read a book and complete Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) activities. |
| Tates Creek HS – Patricia Fitzpatrick | Real World Clinical Lab | Students enter the Medicaid Nurse Aide Lab and work as if in a real world setting donning a “uniform,” secure their hair according to industry standards, etc. while learning skills like electronic charting in a real medical environment. |
| Tates Creek HS – Laura Catherine Gallien | TCHS ADHD Support Group | Develop ADHD Support/Coaching Group for high school students diagnosed with ADHD (or in an evaluation process) to learncoping strategies with a focus on sharing successes, highlighting positive aspects of living with ADHD, and providing new research to families and teachers. |
| Veterans Park Elementary – Ashley Carter and Stacey Altwies | Kindness Squad! | Begin a Kindness Squad program where third graders will spread kindness around the school through a variety of literary projects. |
| Veterans Park Elementary – Jessica Ault | With a focus on BRIGHT | Purchase a giant light, interactive wall (like a Lite Brite) that invites students to learn through play and encourage them to use ingenuity. |
| William Wells Brown Elementary – Carrie Mulert | C.O.L.T.S Time – school wide enrichment project based learning | COLTS Time provides children with daily experiences that will expand knowledge, arouse curiosity, foster creativity, enhance social skills and nurture self-worth. |
| Winburn Middle School – Jenny McCall | 3D Printing & Project Based Learning in the PLTW Classroom | Student create and print 3D designs and build an underwater robot that simulates deep space exploration. |
| Yates Elementary – Dawn Keith | Makerspace | Create innovative spaces in the Media Center and STEM Lab so all students have access to enriched curriculm and enhanced learning processes that nurture their imaginations and enhance academic proficiency. |
Grant Details & Application
To apply, complete the simple online application form by June 2, 2023.
Don’t forget to download the Principal’s Approval form (below) and upload into your application. A rubric (below) is provided to better understand how the applications will be scored.
