Eudora Schools Foundation

Story by Melanie Reese

In September 2015, Morning Pruitt and Eric Magette each received grants from the Eudora Schools Foundation to fund learning tools in their classrooms.

Pruitt plans to spend the money to buy a vernier monitor, a device that detects alpha, beta, gamma and X-ray radiation. The device will be used to help students understand radioactive decay and nuclear chemistry, as well as showing students types of materials that can block radioactive particles.

“I was thrilled that students would get to use materials that worked to test radioactivity around them,” said Pruitt.

Magette plans to spend the money on a classroom set of Wacom Intuos drawing tablets. The tablet connects to a computer and allows the user to draw on the screen using a specialized pen tool instead of a trackpad or mouse. Magette is wanting this new tool in his anatomy class to allow students to draw the body themselves, rather than just receiving a worksheet and labeling.

“For example, instead of labeling a skeleton, students are now drawing the skeleton. Like mixing art with science,” Magette says.

In addition to these two grants, the Eudora Schools Foundation also awarded four middle school and four elementary school grants. The foundation consists of a board of members who are not employees of the Eudora School District, but are parents and community business owners who strive to help benefit the students of Eudora.

Founded in 2006, the foundation’s members have been dedicated to rewarding and recognizing outstanding teachers in the three schools in Eudora: the elementary, middle and high schools. Teachers who believe they need a new teaching device may submit grant requests to the foundation. Since the beginning of this foundation, the amount of money from grants given towards students’ education has totalled more than $20,000.  This year alone the three schools had received over $6,000.

Magette says, “I think [the foundation] is awesome. The grants are really cool because they give you a chance to explore things and purchase some stuff that, especially with this new budget, we wouldn’t typically get to have.”