Greenfield receives Stacy Family Foundation grant

By Editor | March 5, 2024 |

By Carmen Ensinger

Greenfield School District, on behalf of all three school districts in the county, applied for and just recently received, a $20,000 grant from the Stacy Family Foundation to go towards the broadband internet project.
Members of the Greene County Economic Development Group (GCEDG) had approached Carrollton, North Greene and Greenfield about making a donation towards the county’s portion needed to bring high speed fiber optic internet to the county.
Originally, the project was supposed to provide high-speed internet at a cost of $30 to every single person in the county, both rural and in the towns.
Then, it was determined that the towns of Carrollton, White Hall and Roodhouse were already served by high speed internet, so they were eliminated from the low-cost high speed internet option. Rural areas were still included as well.
The city of Greenfield, however, is not served by high speed internet, which is why the school district was chosen to write the grant.
“I wrote this grant with permission from the Carrollton and North Greene school districts basically because it is going to benefit the Greenfield School District more than potentially the Carrollton or North Greene districts,” Greenfield Superintendent Andy Stumpf said. “However, it will still help people who live in the rural areas in these school districts, many of whom are not served by high speed internet yet.”
Stumpf said he and the GCEDG went and met with the Tracy Foundation over a year ago.
“We decided our best route to do this was to do it through the schools,” he said. “So, with permission from former superintendents Mark Scott and Mark Halwachs, I wrote the grant from the schools and the Foundation decided to accept it and are donating the $20,000. We should be getting the check any time now and then that money will be written over to the GCEDG and hopefully the broadband project goes through in the near future and we can increase our internet in the county.”
The district will be moving to a new website soon after the board approved a contract with Apptegy to purchase a new district website.
“There is really nothing wrong with our current website except that it is hard to navigate from a phone,” Stumpf said. “And, let’s be honest, most people navigate the website from their phone. This new website will allow families and community members to put an app on their phone and access the info on the website versus the more old school website. I’m really excited about it.”
Stumpf said the new website will be paid for through REAP (Rural Education Achievement Program) funds, so it won’t cost the district anything.
Stumpf said the district decided to dissolve their e-learning plan.
“I recently found out that if you have an e-learning plan then you have to use remote e-learning days once you run out of snow days before you can use the old school Act of God days,” Stumpf said. “The board and I talked and we just would rather be in person than do e-learning days so we determined to go ahead and dissolve the e-learning plan.”
Omni representatives Alan Churchman and Mark Graves presented information to the board on the bathroom renovation project. They reviewed the final contract cost, discussed the work that will be completed, displayed some of the available graphics and went over timelines. The board approved the contract with Omni for the project.
The district received just over $17,000 for the month of February in one-cent county sales tax funds.
“We are the smallest district in the county, but those funds are very helpful to us,” Stumpf said. “Those funds are going to pay for half of our project this summer. We will be using alternative revenue bonds for the other half to help improve our facilities.”
In district highlights, the board recognized students named as Illinois State Scholars. They include: Angelica Daniels, Jenna Dickerman, Naomi Lansaw and Colten Knapp.
Daniels will be attending the University of Illinois where she is still undecided on her major. Dickerman plans on attending St. Louis College of Pharmacy or Purdue and becoming a pharmacist. Lansaw is going to Blackburn to major in biology and play volleyball. Knapp was not in attendance.
The board viewed the 2023 high school yearbook. Angie Brown and the yearbook class received multiple awards for the 2023 yearbook contest. Brown and her class do an outstanding job creating the yearbook each year.
The board accepted the resignation of volunteer high school baseball coach John Goode and approved Gary McEvers to take his place as a volunteer baseball coach.