IDOE awards WRV $30,000 grant

The White River Valley school district is the recipient of a 2012 Innovation Planning Grant awarded by the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE).

Many school districts applied, but only 20 grants of up to $30,000 each were awarded to school districts around the state.

WRV was the only school in Greene County selected for the award.

WRV Junior/Senior High School Principal Lee Ann Engelhardt said the grant, for the full $30,000, will help the school prepare students for the future.

"With the award of this grant, we will be able to work towards our students acquiring the skills necessary to be successful in the 21st century world," said Engelhardt.

The IDOE launched the 2012 Innovation Planning Grant to support the integration of eLearning into Indiana classrooms. This grant was created to help smaller school corporations, with 5,000 students or less, create a plan to incorporate instructional technology to make a district-wide educational impact on student learning.

Andrew Graves, vice president of the WRV School Board, was part of the planning committee set up to work towards this grant.

"We need to explore all avenues which will make our students more competitive upon exiting our schools," said Graves. "Technology is here to stay and if we can harness these opportunities for our students to prepare them for college or careers then we need to take these steps."

Michael Langevin, who serves as Director of Student Achievement for all three WRV schools, said the members of the Innovation Planning Grant Committee worked very diligently to obtain this grant.

"This grant allows us to continue to look at ways in which we can improve the instruction within all of our buildings in order to meet the individual needs of our students," said Langevin.

"We know the more engaged students are, the more they learn. Producing great instruction which incorporates engaging technology is a vital step WRV is committed to take."

Recipients of the award were required to demonstrate they had already taken steps toward preparing for technology integration and were ready to move forward in this planning process.

Langevin said the next step is to determine the school's needs.

"Five-Star Technology Solutions will be conducting a technology needs assessment to identify infrastructure concerns within the district," said Langevin. "This will help WRV determine what needs to be done to better meet the needs of our students."