Friends of Pleasant Bay Announces School Grant Recipients for 2011-2012!

For Immediate Release, May, 2011
CONTACT: Jenny Avellar, 508-255-6198
Javellar31@netscape.net
Don Ziegler, 508-241-4472
dziggy1@comcast.net

Friends of Pleasant Bay is pleased to announce that it has awarded $12,000 this year to seven recipients of its 17th competitive School Grants Program. This long-standing public education program is funded entirely by members of the Friends. Each grant is intended to promote education, research and public awareness in issues of critical environmental concern with special emphasis on students experiencing and studying Pleasant Bay and its watershed. The continued generosity of the Friends combined with the diligence of committed teachers is making Pleasant Bay an integral part of school programs. As in the past, this year’s competition was open to all teachers in Brewster, Chatham, Harwich and Orleans schools, including Nauset Regional High School.

School budgets in most Cape towns have eliminated transportation funds for field trips all together. Therefore, a top priority of FOPB’s School Grants Committee is to provide transportation monies for projects that involve taking students to the Bay. The Friends are providing five transportation grants totaling close to $5,500 to the following schools: Orleans Elementary School, Chatham Elementary School, Nauset Regional Middle School, and Nauset Regional High School.

FOPB 2011-2012 School Grant Recipients – Add One

6 grants in the Sciences and Humanities have been awarded to:

• Orleans Elementary, Third Grade teachers, Martha Jenkins and Sue Keohan
• Nauset Regional Middle School, 1 grant , Debra Keavy, Art. I grant, John Krenik, 7th grade art
• Nauset Regional High School, Post graduate Life Skills Program, Mae Timmons
• Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School, Grade 6 Science, Brian Bates
• Chatham Elementary School, Pre K- grade 4, Stephanie Rae

The Orleans, Chatham and Nauset Regional School Grants continue projects that the Friends of Pleasant Bay have previously funded during previous years. The grants integrate the Pleasant Bay-oriented programs into the actual school curriculums. Clearly, past FOPB grants are being used as the foundation for future new School Grants.

The mission of the Friends of Pleasant Bay, founded in 1985 as a non-profit organization, is to promote education, research and public awareness of the area as one of critical environmental concern, to preserve open space and the visual quality of the area, to ensure habitat protection of the rich biological diversity and productivity of the Bay, to retain and enhance public access to the shoreline and to preserve natural and historic sites.