In its quest to continue to try to improve reading and math skills of its students, Kingfisher Public Schools took more steps last week to build the infrastructure for a new grant.

The board of education voted 4-0 at its November regular meeting last Monday to approve a budget of $328,995 for what the district is calling the Inspire Grant.

It’s being funded by the Office of Indian Education at the U.S. Department of Education and although it will focus on Native American students, Superintendent Andy Evans said it will benefit all students within the district.

“We have several intentions with this grant,” Evans told the KT&FP.

Some of the plans he laid out include:

• Working to help the district’s Native American students be prepared to participate in post-secondary education and/or training;

• Help Native American students utilize resources available to them for their education through a counselor and two advocates that are funded by the grant;

• Continue the district’s push for literacy and math skills from pre-k through 12th grade as the grant funds a math curriculum coach and a literacy curriculum coach.

“Any grant like this will help all the students in the district,” Evans said. “The Inspire Grant is an important opportunity for the district to have additional funding to bring the best possible professional development to our teachers and to continue to improve our curriculum.”

Approving the budget was one of several steps taken by the board in a multi-step process to put the grant into action.

“We need to approve a budget before we can approve the positions,” Evans said.

The budget consists of $268,120 in personnel costs, which includes salaries for the math and literacy positions.

There are also positions for a federal claims clerk, federal payroll clerk, federal revenue clerk, two advocates and a counselor as well as professional development stipends.

The budget includes another $27,875 for supplies, which includes computers, iPads and other learning materials.

The grant also funds two contractual positions totaling $33,000, including one for an outside evaluator.

“We have to have that person in place before we can spend any money from the grant,” Evans said.

That person will be Jay Edelen, a former teacher and coach at KPS who is now the superintendent at Arapaho-Butler Public Schools.

“He’s got quite a bit of experience with grants,” Evans said. “He’ll be looking at data, our methodologies and the other parts of the grant we’re trying to achieve.”

Some of the other positions for the grant were filled at the meeting through extra-duty contracts.

Those approved were Dawn Tollefson, Sheila Redwine, Heather Mercer, Kris Schaefer, Steven Wilson, Taylor Young and Pam Werner.

Evans said the district will continue to move forward with the other aspects of the grant.

“Our end goal is to raise the ACT scores of our Native American student as well as all our other students to help them be eligible for more and better educational and training opportunities in the future,” Evans said.

He recalled a previous grant at Kingfisher offering such benefits.

“When Mr. (Jim) Hines was superintendent, Judy Wood wrote the Scribe Grant that was funded in the same method as Inspire,” Evans said. “Scribe still has positive returns for the district even today.”

Evans said he and Redwine, who has been pivotal in the grant process, have similar goals.

“We have visisted several times about wanting this to have a similar effect to Scribe and I believe the way she put it together, we will see that result,” Evans said.

All moves were unanimously approved by board members Mike Copeland, Dana Golbek, Charles Walker and Bill Reitz.

Board member Brad Wittrock was unable to attend the meeting as he was at Camp Goddard with several KPS students.

In other actions, the board also approved to begin the grant writing process for the STARS and Rising STARS programs.

The longtime after- school program is funded by a grant from the Oklahoma State Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education through the 21st Century Learning Center.

“The STARS program has been really important to a lot of people because it does give students some place to be after school,” Evans said. “With the literacy push that we’re seeing, this will complement what we’re doing within the school with our literacy grant and with our Inspire grant.”

Before moving forward, Evans said teachers were surveyed about the effectiveness of the program and to see if the district should push to renew the grant.

“The teachers agreed we needed it,” he said.

The board also approved a resolution calling for a school board election for seat No. 1.

The filing period is 8 a.m. Monday, Dec. 1 through 5 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 3.

The seat is currently filled by Copeland, who was appointed to the board last year to fill an unexpired term of Terry Payne, who moved out of the district.

After nearly an hour in executive session, the board made multiple personnel moves.

That included hiring Erik Stutts and Alexandria Vargus for maintenance and day care positions, respectively.

Also approved was the contract with the Department of Human Services to help provide a school-based social worker.

That position is held by Bill Harris. The DHS pays 80 percent of the contract and the district covers the remainder.

Board members also approved Evans’ recommendation to open seven teacher’s aide positions for reading interventions and in-school suspensions.