Grants used to help Five Towns schools

When the play garden at the Five Towns Early Learning Center in Inwood was damaged by Hurricane Sandy, Executive Director Pepper Robinson sought out a grant to help with repairs.

Two $4,000 Hewlett-Woodmere Public Schools Endowment Fund grants helped the school district’s Youth Leadership Forum create a community garden that is also an educational tool. It produced its first crop of herbs, trees and vegetables this summer.

A combination of federal and state grant money totaling $265,000 supported summer school for 300 students in the Lawrence district this year.

The Hewlett-Woodmere and Lawrence public school districts must cope with federal- and state-mandated expenses, the cost of which are borne by local taxpayers. But the state tax cap limits how much the districts can increase property taxes. Faced with the gulf between what districts spend and how much they can tax, resourceful officials look for alternative funding sources to help pay for programs they want to offer.

“There are increased mandates and increased expectations, and you have decreased state aid, and there are revenue limitations on levying taxes,” Hewlett-Woodmere Superintendent Dr. Joyce Bisso said by way of explaining why grants are needed. “With those things converging, it makes it more difficult to do the work [of educating students] well.”

The Early Learning Center, which serves as a preschool for nearly 55 children, also looks to grants to supplement its needs. It is supported by donations from the Five Towns and Peninsula Kiwanis groups, Five Towns Community Chest and the National Council for Jewish Women Peninsula Section.

Robinson obtained $5,000 from Save the Children to replace bushes in the center’s Arbor Day Foundation-certified Nature Explorer Classroom that were destroyed by Sandy. “They were interested in helping Sandy victims, but the grant was very specific about the damage that had been done,” she said. “Save the Children inspected the site before they sent the money.”

Robinson, who waited six months for the Save the Children money, said she applied for other grants, including $2,000 from the Long Island Fund for Women & Girls (which she did not get) and a $10,000 matching grant from the Amy Hagedorn Foundation that was used to repair the center’s roof. “Long Island Women & Girls, I thought I met the criteria,” she said. “Usually the grants are for something specific like bicycles. You have to meet the requirements of the grantor.”

The tricky thing about these grants, whether they are administered by government agencies, nonprofit organizations, private foundations or public corporations, is the qualification process. “You have to meet their qualifications, and there is a way to write grants,” Bisso said. “There is specialized technique — the language has to be specific, and you have to know what your budget will be.”

After acquiring federal and state money to pay for summer school, Lawrence Superintendent Gary Schall said that the district is in the process of putting together a grant-writing committee comprising administrators and other interested people. “We’re thinking about applying for many different types of grants, including corporate and foundation grants,” Schall said.

The Hewlett-Woodmere district recently applied for a grant through the State Farm Student Advisory Board for the community garden. Bisso said that the danger lies in getting money once and not being able to sustain the educational program. But the risk is worth it, she said.

“With that one-shot-amount money, if it’s not sustainable you could be putting off the inevitable,” she said of the potential demise of a grant-supported program. “However, if we get a substantial revenue and accomplish something in a year we could accomplish in five years, it would have been worth it.”

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