WCS Receives Portion Of $26.4M Counseling Grant From Lilly
September 30, 2017 at 4:34 a.m.
By Staff Report-
The grants – ranging from $68,312 to $2.87 million – are part of the Endowment’s Comprehensive Counseling Initiative for Indiana K-12 Students.
The grants include include $701,100 for WCS, which was the only school corporation in Kosciusko County to receive funds.
Launched in September 2016, the five-year initiative is designed to encourage the state’s public school corporations and charter schools to aspire to and develop best practice comprehensive counseling models that effectively address the academic, college, career, and social and emotional counseling needs of their students.
Schools in 30 of Indiana’s 92 counties will benefit from the grants. Grant amounts were based on the student enrollment of the school corporation or charter school.
The school corporations and charter schools will use the grants to launch a variety of efforts that include:
• Collaborating with mental health care providers to address their students’ social and emotional challenges.
• Pursuing novel ways to engage local businesses in preparing students for a range of employment opportunities, including developing mentoring and internship programs and planning industry information sessions and site visits to local companies.
• Implementing a comprehensive counseling model developed by the American School Counselor Association.
• Making better use of digital tools and adding and integrating curricula for college and career exploration and preparation.
• Providing professional development to teachers, counselors and administrators so they can identify and address the social and emotional needs of students.
• Partnering with colleges and universities to offer college counseling, financial aid assistance, campus visits and related programs.
“The response from school corporations and charter schools far exceeded the Endowment’s expectations,” said Sara B. Cobb, the Endowment’s vice president for education. “We believe that this response demonstrates a growing awareness that enhanced and expanded counseling programs are urgently needed to address the academic, college, career, and social and emotional counseling needs of Indiana’s K-12 students.
“We were most pleased to see how the schools engaged a wide variety of community stakeholders in assessing their students’ counseling needs and developing strategies to address them,” she said.
The grants – ranging from $68,312 to $2.87 million – are part of the Endowment’s Comprehensive Counseling Initiative for Indiana K-12 Students.
The grants include include $701,100 for WCS, which was the only school corporation in Kosciusko County to receive funds.
Launched in September 2016, the five-year initiative is designed to encourage the state’s public school corporations and charter schools to aspire to and develop best practice comprehensive counseling models that effectively address the academic, college, career, and social and emotional counseling needs of their students.
Schools in 30 of Indiana’s 92 counties will benefit from the grants. Grant amounts were based on the student enrollment of the school corporation or charter school.
The school corporations and charter schools will use the grants to launch a variety of efforts that include:
• Collaborating with mental health care providers to address their students’ social and emotional challenges.
• Pursuing novel ways to engage local businesses in preparing students for a range of employment opportunities, including developing mentoring and internship programs and planning industry information sessions and site visits to local companies.
• Implementing a comprehensive counseling model developed by the American School Counselor Association.
• Making better use of digital tools and adding and integrating curricula for college and career exploration and preparation.
• Providing professional development to teachers, counselors and administrators so they can identify and address the social and emotional needs of students.
• Partnering with colleges and universities to offer college counseling, financial aid assistance, campus visits and related programs.
“The response from school corporations and charter schools far exceeded the Endowment’s expectations,” said Sara B. Cobb, the Endowment’s vice president for education. “We believe that this response demonstrates a growing awareness that enhanced and expanded counseling programs are urgently needed to address the academic, college, career, and social and emotional counseling needs of Indiana’s K-12 students.
“We were most pleased to see how the schools engaged a wide variety of community stakeholders in assessing their students’ counseling needs and developing strategies to address them,” she said.
Have a news tip? Email [email protected] or Call/Text 360-922-3092