Officials in Denver Public Schools and St. Vrain Valley School District learned their districts will receive millions of dollars in a federal grant to help English-language learners in the classroom.
Denver will receive more than $25 million and St. Vrain will receive $3.6 million in the federal grant announced today.
The districts were among the 49 finalists out of nearly 1,700 applicants for potential funding under the Investing in Innovation (i3) program. To receive a share of the $650 million in i3 grants, the winning applicants must secure a commitment for a 20 percent private sector match by Sept. 8, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
A group of private foundations has set up a website to help the grantees find matching dollars.
The applications come from school districts and nonprofit organizations, as well as colleges and universities.
Denver’s program is designed to boost reading programs for students who are English-language learners and students with disabilities.
Denver’s project is called “Collaborative Strategic Reading Colorado” and is designed around the CU BUENO Center literacy intervention that has been used successfully in linguistically diverse classrooms to address the linguistic and academic needs of students who are learning English and students with disabilities.
The project focuses on Collaborative Strategic Reading professional development for teachers in high-need middle school classrooms.
St. Vrain’s program is a “multi-faceted comprehensive strategy to address the unmet needs for the targeted high-need students; specifically Hispanic and ELL students at Skyline High School and its feeder schools.”
The project will benefit 3,800 students.
