Newton Schools Foundation has approved a grant of up to $85,500 for the Newton Public Schools to purchase 300 Chromebooks for students who need access to online learning during school closures. NSF is committed to closing gaps in achievement and opportunity as part of its mission to advance educational excellence and equity in the Newton Public Schools.
When the schools closed unexpectedly, NSF committed to working with school administrators to make available the balance of unrestricted NSF grant funds for this year for emerging system needs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“NSF has demonstrated time and again their steadfast and unwavering commitment to supporting the needs of our district. We are grateful for their flexibility to fulfill a need we could not have predicted at the start of this school year,” said David Fleishman, Superintendent of Schools. “Connecting students with their teachers and peers provides important social and emotional support during this unsettling time. With this grant, more students will be able to connect with their teachers and access the instruction and learning resources provided during this school closure.”
The district has already distributed more than 400 Chromebooks to families. As additional requests for Chromebooks continue to come in, NSF will help the Newton Public Schools fulfill the need to support remote learning for students who otherwise wouldn’t have access to educational opportunities online.
“Thanks to the generosity of our donors—who are individuals and businesses throughout the Newton community–we were able to fund this grant and meet an unusual and critical need,” said Marcia Tabenken, NSF co-president.
“Though they may be miles apart physically, students and teachers can now connect and collaborate virtually while together our community rides out this storm,” said Liz Hiser, NSF co-president.
This special system-wide grant comes in addition to 13 grants totaling $23,000 that NSF approved in early March as part of its normal grant-making process to fund new and promising initiatives, professional development, and programs to close gaps in achievement and opportunity across Newton’s K-12 classrooms.
This is great news.
Let’s add this one to “things we learned during the pandemic”: most of the social inequities (of which this technical disparity is one) that are painfully visible to us now were always present, always painful, always unfair to those who live every day without.
They just didn’t affect most of us. We didn’t see it. Perhaps we didn’t want to. And we didn’t address those things during the good times when we had the most means and the greatest opportunity.
Our fates and fortunes are tied together. We lift each other to lift us all. That is community, that is society. There is always a need.