SAD 14 receives grants for programs and faculty

DANFORTH, Maine — SAD 14, in Danforth, will soon be seeing a great expansion in faculty and educational programs after receiving five new grants from the federal and state levels over the past few weeks.
    SAD 14 worked together with the schools in the surrounding area of Aroostook and Washington Counties in order to improve their chances of receiving this grant money, which reaches to roughly $1.5 million for next year alone.
Each grant supplies funds that will go towards new faculty and, or, programs to directly help the students within the district. Some of the programs involved with the grants include new after-school programming, a new elementary reading program, improving math and science programs, and well as alcohol abuse outreach.
“The kids are benefiting drastically in this area. It all goes right back to the kids,” explained Superintendent Bill Dobbins enthusiastically.
New jobs will also be created within the district for most of these new programs.
Dobbins believes the grant money came just in time, as some budgetary shortcomings have arisen recently in districts around the area. Dobbins was also very proud that SAD 14 was able to get some of the competitive grants that they did.
“There’s good things happening in the districts around here and its important for people to see that,” expressed Dobbins.
One grant, from the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, is a federal grant given to 52 schools around the nation, two of which were in Maine. This specific grant is based on improving behavioral skills and changing unhealthy habits at a young age through elementary guidance counseling. The grant also focuses on sustaining the process of elementary guidance and passing it on to other schools.
Astoundingly, three of the five grants SAD 14 recently received were competitive federally funded grants, in which collaboration with schools like Hodgdon, Southern Aroostook, and Katahdin helped bring the money to the area.
“A lot of these [grants] would not work without the cooperation of the other three school districts … I think its very important that we are all cooperative from one district to the other,” said Dobbins.