2023 Grants 

Parkdale Reads

$4,655.41

This grant provided 2nd grade students with new books tailored to different independent reading levels for classroom and home use. This allows teachers to better meet students at their level and ensure everyone can learn and develop their reading skills with materials appropriate for them. It also promotes reading outside school.

Re-Imagining the English Classroom

$7,020.88

New furniture, student lap desks, white boards, and media tables were purchased to allow EAHS English teachers to seamlessly create flexible “mini classrooms” that support differentiated instruction and collaborative learning opportunities focused on reading comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, and composition.

Women’s Leadership Conference

$4,000

This student-designed conference was created by young women from EAHS interested in community leadership. They invited different local speakers to present on and discuss leadership skills needed by women in higher education and in the workforce. This opportunity allowed students to discuss gender equity and build their communication, networking, and marketing skills.

Presentations at the innaugural event included:

• –“Developing Confidence and Authenticity for Leadership”: Jessica Armbrust (East Aurora Coop Market general manager and former EAUFSD School Board president)
• –“My MUSE: Inspired Portraits”: Vanessa Frost (Muse Jar owner)
• –“Creating Your College Campus: The Importance of the Mentor-Mentee Relationship”: Penny Messigner (Daemen University Women’s Studies & History professor)
• “Developing Communication & Negotiation  Skills for Female Leaders”: Jennifer Rizzo-Choi (International Institute of Buffalo executive director)
• –“Women in Professional Sports”: Michelle Roberts (Buffalo Bills Foundation executive director)
• –“Handling Confrontation: Exercises for Process Improvements”: Alex Robinson (Blue Eyed Baker owner)As
• As noted by the students: “Empowered women empower women. We seek to develop the skills and resources needed to make today’s college campuses work for us and utilize our networking capabilities, beginning at home. We want to return to WNY as leaders for our communities and our next generations.”

As 

Sustainable Agriculture Program

$22,000

The Sustainable Agriculture Program allows EAHS students to work on a one-acre farm at the high school, educating and empowering them to support local food production that works within natural systems and yields environmental and economic benefits. The program aims to create lifelong advocates, producers, and consumers of local food that’s healthy and sustainable. Besides growing plants and crops, students have tended chickens, turkeys, cows, and bees and sold eggs, chicken, and honey from the farm. 

This course takes core ideas from earth science, biology, chemistry, and physics and has students apply them in a real-world agricultural setting. Students have to design and build their own experiments and make them work, constantly learning and adjusting to changing conditions and circumstances.

Sensory Friendly Classrooms

$2,902.98

Utilizing informed sensory design, this grant updated two Parkdale Elementary classrooms with enhancements to better support students’ visual, auditory, touch, vestibular, proprioceptive, and interoceptive senses, including:

• – Dimmable LED string lights and Octo Light fluorescent light covers
• – New carpet
• – Whiteboard table and student workspaces
• – Portable lap desks, floor cushions, and plants

As grant recipients Miss Kibler and Mrs. Hayes noted:

“Children have benefitted from the new flexible seating and dry erase tables throughout the year. These items have added many opportunities for student collaboration and paired work
experiences during learning tasks. Students and parents continue to share their appreciation for the enhanced lighting, flexible seating, dry erase tables, plants, and workspaces in the classrooms.”

Community Safety Training

$7,700

This grant funded new AED trainers as well as mannequins for CPR training that the District makes available to students, staff, faculty, and community members. The innovative mannequins are equipped with feedback devices to let users know if they’re performing chest compressions at the proper pace and depth, ensuring proper learning.

Creating a Student-Led Apparel Design Company

$6,465

This grant funded the Devil’s Den, a school-based enterprise that allows EAHS DECA students to design, print, and sell custom apparel. Students are able to put the money raised from sales toward future DECA competitions and conferences they’d like to attend. Through this hands-on, experiential learning, students gain valuable skills in business, project management, customer service, and operations.

Grant funds were used to purchase a new Hotronix heat press, heat printing equipment cart, laser alignment system, heat transfers, and t-shirts.