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Date: 10/27/2022
LONGMEADOW – Educators gathered at Longmeadow High School on Oct. 18 to receive funding from the Longmeadow Educational Endowment Fund (LEEF) for curriculum, equipment and materials.
Since its founding in 2002, LEEF has awarded over $1.46 million in grants to educators in Longmeadow Public Schools (LPS), including $80,000 this year, said LEEF President Brian David Crawford.
“Not many communities can say they are so supported by an endowment,”said LPS Superintendent M. Martin O’Shea.
Academic subjects that have benefitted from LEEF grants include robotics, finance and investment, poetry and geography.
Laurie Schneider, a social studies teacher at Longmeadow High School, said that in 2018, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education mandated that students in eighth grade and higher undertake an action civics project. Last year, a group of students chose to address ableism, defined as the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. The students applied for a LEEF grant to purchase books featuring anti-ableism themes and characters for each school library in the district. The books will be displayed later this year. Schneider said the students also petitioned the School Committee to declare an Abilities Awareness Day, which will be observed in December.
Among this year’s recipients are librarian Kerry Kennedy, art teacher Henry Wong, special education teacher Ruthann August and health education teacher Phillipa Siegel. The grants will be used for a 3D printer, an outdoor classroom experience, a world language classroom, education in Haitian folklore expression, anti-racist and LGBTQ+ literature and a CPR Saves Lives course, among other programs.
O’Shea praised LEEF and said the grant ceremony was “an opportunity to celebrate all the innovation that’s been spurred by these grants.”
For more information on LEEF, visit https://www.goleef.org.