PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Four Providence schools will receive grants totaling $50,237 in the latest round of awards from the Fund for the Education of the Children of Providence. That fund, inspired by the Report of the University’s Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, is an initiative to aid local public schools by raising a $10-million permanent endowment to be managed by the Corporation of Brown University.

“Both Brown and the Corporation are proud to play a part in the education of the children of Providence in providing this funding that will directly benefit the students through the purchase of necessary programs and supplies,” said Artemis A.W. Joukowsky, Brown's chancellor emeritus and one of four members of the Corporation committee that oversees the fund.

The new grants will be made to Charles Fortes Elementary School, Asa Messer Elementary School, Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts, and Urban Collective Accelerated Program.

• A grant of $20,000 will be given to Asa Messer Elementary School to partner with the nonprofit volunteer tutoring organization Inspiring Minds to expand and strengthen student learning systems through an intense intervention initiative. For the last five years, the school has been working with Inspiring Minds to improve student literacy skills. School officials say the grant will allow Asa Messer to bring more students into the intervention tutoring program, with the goal of helping students “Read by Three, Thrive by Five.”
• Urban Collective Accelerated Program will be awarded $18,000 to purchase 16 iMac computers with wireless input, allowing the school to place two computers in each classroom. School officials say the new computers will allow students, who range from seventh to ninth grade, to move from posterboards and oral reports to Prezi presentations and podcasts so that they can be proficient in these tools as they advance in their education and careers.
• The fund awarded $11,250 to Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts (TAPA) to purchase film equipment, musical instruments, and software, dance supplies, and theatre materials needed to support the school’s arts-integrated education model. Students at TAPA, the only arts-integrated public school in the state, pick an arts major to focus on while also receiving a Rhode Island and Common Core standards-driven academic education. Supplies to be purchased with the grant funds include darkroom materials for the film program; fitted ballet shoes, outfits and portable mirrors for the dance program; lighting units and sewing machines for costume design; and guitars, basses, a drum set, and amplifiers for the music program.
• Charles Fortes Elementary School will receive approximately $1,000 to enhance the school’s health curriculum by incorporating a research-based social-emotional skills program that is also designed to prevent violence. The school, which educates students in preschool through first grade, will use this enhanced curriculum to target students’ social skills at an early age with the goal of promoting a caring school environment while fostering responsible behavior in later years.

The central goal of the Fund for the Education of the Children of Providence is to achieve significant, long-term, sustainable impact on the intellectual and social growth of Providence youth. Since spring 2009, grants have been used to purchase graphing calculators for Providence middle and high school classrooms; support curricular development at Roger Williams Middle School, Vartan Gregorian Elementary School and Hope High School; expand musical programs at Windmill Elementary School and Carl G. Lauro Elementary School; improve computer workstations at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School; and purchase interactive digital technologies at Paul Cuffee School.