The Illinois Education Association is proud to announce that it has awarded two $1,000 grants to a member of the Lexington Education Association.
Emma Long and Tabitha Newbold were given the grant as part of the IEA’s Schools and Community Outreach by Educators program, which is a grant program designed to give educators in the first 10 years of their career a chance to apply for money for a service project.
Long works as the district art educator and Newbold works as junior high and high school special education teacher at Lexington CUSD. Long has been employed in this position for 4 years and Newbold 2.
The service program Long chose to do is create a visuals library for the district educators to use within their classrooms. The $1000 grant will fund the supplies needed by art club to create visuals for teachers to check out and use as educational resources in their classroom. Newbold has chosen to fund a Backpack Program. The Backpack Program was created to ensure that no student in our school community go hungry on the weekends or extended breaks from school. Any family with a student in the school district can sign up for the program. The $1,000 grant is used to fund the food resources that are supplied to our students who are in need. We are currently supplying backpacks for 10 families in Lexington.
LEA President, Darrin Frye says
“I am very proud to be a part of such a thoughtful and hard-working staff. Lexington teachers continue to go far beyond what is asked of them in the classroom as exemplified once again by two of our LEA members. Tabitha Newbold and Emma Long have been awarded for their hard work and desire to make Lexington a place where students will be successful.
Henry Ford said it best, ‘Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.’
Emma and Tabitha continue to make Lexington the place to be because of their hard work and desire to see students obtain the tools they need in order to be successful.”
In all, more than 50 grants were awarded to educators’ projects across the state. Educators’ ideas for projects were creative, varied and are based both inside and outside schools. All of them benefited students, students’ families and the community.
Field trips, food pantries, plans to get parents involved in schools, increased access to supplies and community service projects were just some of the ideas that were funded.
“Another year of this program has resulted in a range of ideas submitted by our members and we are so pleased with such creative effort,” said IEA President Cinda Klickna.
“We know that our educators are in the schools every day giving 100 percent, but there are unmet needs as well. So many of them wanted to do more. It’s in their nature. We were glad to help them make their ideas come to fruition.”
The IEA represents more than 130,000 members, including teachers, education support professionals, higher education faculty and staff, retired educators and students planning to become teachers.
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