Foundation Awards $61,594 in Grants for 2007-08!

Allen ISD teachers and staff submitted nearly 100 grant applications for the 2007-08 school year. The Foundation Grant Review Committee has selected 54 grants for funding. These grants, which will impact students on nearly every campus in Allen, total $61,594.

Foundation Creates Jenny Preston
Future Teacher Scholarship

The Foundation For Allen Schools has created the Jenny Preston Future Teacher Scholarship. This scholarship will be awarded to an Allen High School student who has completed the Ready, Set, Teach program and is planning to attend college to attain a teaching degree. The Ready, Set, Teach program, which was created under Preston’s leadership, is a two year program that allows AHS students receive educational instruction and work hands on in Allen ISD classrooms. To date, 88 students have completed the program. 

“The Foundation board created the Jenny Preston Future Teacher Scholarship to honor Jenny’s dedication to Allen’s teachers and staff, and to thank her for all her hard work on behalf of our schools,” said Dr. Jerry Wilson, chairman of the Foundation board of directors. “We thought this was the best way to show our appreciation for the time and support she has given in helping the Foundation to grow and succeed over the last several years.” 

Contributions to the scholarship funds can be made online at www.allforallen.org or www.allenisd.org or by calling the Foundation at 972-727-0362.

The Jeannette’s Story Memorial Fund has been established through the Foundation For Allen Schools by Michael and Solina Marquis. The fund is in memory of their daughter, Jeannette Lorraine Marquis who was a 2003 graduate of Allen High School.

“We created the Jeannette’s Story Memorial Fund because we did not want our daughter to be forgotten. The love we feel for a child – or anyone close in our hearts – does not die when the person leaves this earth. That death though leaves us with the task of taking that love and finding a meaningful place for it,” said Mrs. Marquis. “We want the focus of Jeannette’s Fund to be on the teachers and librarians that help to raise our young people and who so often are the ones who help them see their possibilities. By establishing this special fund within the Foundation, we are hoping to expand the ways in which teachers and librarians in our community can bring language and literature to life for our young people.”

The fund was established in 2006 with a gift of $10,000 and will be used to support classroom grants through the Foundation’s Educational Grant Program.

“Jeannette liked psychology and political science. She had wonderful people skills and was very social. She was very creative, she loved pottery and photography, travel and learning about other cultures. And of course, she loved books and had many favorite stories,” Marquis said. “Through her memorial fund we are not just buying books but we are hoping to help create readers, creating families of readers and involving the parent and the child in good writing, good storytelling, and poetry and so on.”

“We hope this fund will make a little bit of a difference. If more teachers have a wider variety of resources and we can get more kids to love language, then they will want to read. When you create a reader, a lover of language and story, you give that person, and the whole world, infinite possibilities.”

The Foundation places special memorial plaques in the Allen ISD classrooms which are receiving Jeannette’s Story Memorial Fund grants. Donors who wish to make a designated gift in memory of Jeannette Marquis may do so by contacting the Foundation at 972-727-0362 or regina_taylor@allenisd.org.

Below is a list of grants made possible by the Jeannette's Story Memorial Fund:

Grants for the 2007-08 school year

"ALLen Reads"
Ms. Regina Schneider, Allen ISD - Language Arts Department

"Art Through Children's Literature"
Ms. Cynthia Butler - Green and Norton Elementary Schools

"Share the Love of Reading"
Ms. Nancy VandernBerge, Ms. Theresa Williams, Ms. Dee Foster, Ms. Kellie Schubert, Ms. Holly Siratt - Boon Elementary School

"Family Reading Night"
Ms. Angelita Tranka, Rountree Elementary School

"The Page Turners"
Ms. Lori Gunn, Boyd Elementary School
Ms. Brenda Steffens, Reed Elementary School
Ms. Royla Gossett, Chandler Elementary School

"Once Upon a Sound, The Sequel"
Steve DeWitt and Melissa Becker, Boon Elementary School

"Pre-K Library Resources"
Ms. Sandy Williams, Bolin Elementary School

"An Author Visits Bolin Elementary"
Ms. Sandy Williams, Bolin Elementary School

Grants for the 2006-07 school year

“A Jumpstart to Loving Literature”
Maridee Ryan, Boyd Elementary School 

“Carts of Knowledge”
Lori Gunn, Boyd Elementary School

“Ready to Read”
Audra Heins, Bolin Elementary School

“Mock Trial Reading Center”
Scott Phillips, Ford Middle School

“Pairing Fiction and Nonfiction to Enhance Learning”
Brenda Steffens, Reed Elementary School

“Kids Connecting to Literature”
Shelley Privett and Jane Davidson, Rountree Elementary School

“Battle of the Books”
Mary Higdon, Rountree Elementary School

“Read at Home Backpacks”
Cheryl Mena, Vaughan Elementary School

Green Elementary students stitch flags that they designed as part of 3rd Grade in Colonial America, one segment of a $1,500 grant "History Alive and Kicking" the school received from the Foundation.