Colfax schools receive Transition Readiness Grant and USDA Distance Learning Grant
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — The Colfax school district has been awarded a $45,100 Transition Readiness Grant and also is part of the $1 million grant award from the United States Department of Agriculture to Cooperative Educational Service Agency 10’s Distance Learning Service.
The Transition Readiness Grant will help the school district’s transition program that works with students to go from school to work, said William C. Yingst Jr. at the Colfax Board of Education’s October 26 meeting.
The Transition Readiness Grant program is intended to help Wisconsin students who have disabilities to transition to work and post-secondary education after high school.
The grant program started in 2019, and in the first year, received about 130 requests for $9 million, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s website.
Walmart Distribution and Mayo Clinic have provided work opportunities for Colfax students in the past, Yingst noted.
The grant amount of $45,100 would buy a van for the district to bring students to a transition workplace, he said.
USDA grant
The USDA Distance Learning grant includes Colfax and 38 other school districts in CESA 10.
According to a news release from CESA10 included in the school board packet, “The grant award will serve to fund two primary purposes. First, school district video conferencing equipment will be updated and refreshed, expanding educational opportunities and improving endpoint reliability and security. Second, CESA10’s video conferencing backbone and infrastructure will be replaced with the most current technologies, improving reliability, security and service to their member districts.”
In the past, the school district has used the distance learning grants through CESA10 to buy the Polycom screens that classrooms use to connect students to distance learning classes at technical schools and universities, Yingst said.
Colfax has provided matching funds for the Polycom screens of $10,000 to match $10,000 in grant funding, he said.
According to the CESA10 news release, “CESA10’s Distance Learning Project — Achieving Wisconsin Equity (AWE) will address three needs in our exceptionally rural Wisconsin school districts: a lack of education opportunities for students, a lack of trained teachers, and a prevalence of substance use and mental health disorders and the subsequent lack of access to education and treatment. AWE will leverage existing, well established partnerships between CESA10, school districts, institutions of higher education, and mental health care providers, while also expanding connections to local county health departments and law enforcement. The outcomes of AWE will impact more than 10,000 high school students and 2,100 PK-12 teachers in the region.”