Teachers make nonprofit grants perform wonders

Berkley and seven other teachers each received $250 grants from the Mat-Su Schools Foundation, a nonprofit that technically started in 2005 but just this winter distributed its first round of gifts.

Berkley said she also bought copies of Sophocles' classic play "Antigone" and Ray Bradbury's novel about censorship, "Fahrenheit 451." In addition, she purchased posters to help her sixth-12th grade students remember literary terms like "alliteration."

"I've applied for a lot of grants, nationally and locally," Berkley said. "(This) money is more accessible. When you're applying for a nationwide grant, you're competing with how many teachers nationwide?"

Former Matanuska-Susitna Borough School Board member Pat Purcell is treasurer of the foundation and was one of its first members. She said the group was created in 2005 as a School Board committee focused on encouraging partnerships between the vocational/technical high school then being built and businesses that might employ its students.

But that idea fell by the wayside, Purcell said, done in by sporadic meetings and changeover among committee members. In the last two years, the group has changed its name and focus to be a grant source for funding educational programs. It's no longer connected to the School Board, Purcell said.

Meanwhile, a modest amount of money has rolled in. Companies such as BP Exploration and accounting firm Swalling & Associates donated, as did others who support the foundation's goals. Purcell said the group has more than $8,000 socked away in a bank. The Alaska Community Foundation, a funds manager for numerous nonprofits and groups in the state, holds another $5,000, she said.

The group plans to make the foundation an endowment, stockpiling enough in donations to rely on interest to finance the grants it distributes each year.

"We want to be in the millions, where we've got enough in the Community Foundation we can just use our interest to fund the grants we want to fund," Purcell said.

But they're not there yet. The round of grants distributed in November came from the foundation's reserve, Purcell said.

"We felt like we had enough money in reserve to give something away," she said. They plan to give away 10 more $250 grants in the spring.

Purcell said the group is attending fundraiser training in January and plans to focus its donor list on former teachers and Mat-Su school alumni.

Fewer than 10 teachers applied for the grants this fall, Purcell said. She said she's looking forward to the difficult task of sorting through the entries to select the best ones.

The $250 grants may seem small, but Purcell said it's amazing to see how far teachers can stretch them. Some, like Berkley, got the money for things that will be used in the classroom for years. Others, like Elizabeth Chinama, a fourth- and fifth-grade combined classroom teacher at Snowshoe Elementary, plan to use the money for one-time events. Chinama and her 25 students received a grant to help pay for an overnight trip they plan to take in April to the Seward SeaLife Center, a trip she expects will cost $110 per child. There, students will dissect octopi and stay overnight at the center, then board a marine tour boat the next day to learn more about the aquatic environment.

"It's a pretty expensive trip. Just for them to be able to help makes me feel really good," Chinama said. "It's amazing what $10 per kid does. It lowers the cost overall."

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at www.adn.com/contact/rwhite or call 352-6709.