Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2008 / Skillman foundation donates $160K more to city's Catholic schools
Skillman foundation donates $160K more to city's Catholic schools
by Joe Kohn of The Michigan Catholic
Published September 26, 2008
Detroit — For the third year, the philanthropic Skillman Foundation is helping the Archdiocese of Detroit develop important resources for its inner-city schools here.
The foundation granted $160,000 to the archdiocese — the final installment of a three-year, $522,000 grant — to develop enrichment programs for eight Catholic urban elementary schools. The grant has helped fund the City School Resource Team in providing professional training and networking opportunities to school administrators and teachers.
"This has allowed us to come into the schools and help the principals develop school improvement chains, and develop schools into professional learning communities," says Bernadette Sugrue, Skillman grant director for the archdiocesan Office for Catholic schools. "We've also done things like provide workshops for teachers over these three years."
Sugrue says educators in Detroit's Catholic elementary schools have reacted positively from the help, and they're even beginning to see standardized test scores improve.
An important element of the grant-funded programs, she adds, is that it helps educators share best practices with one another, not just within a school but with other schools.
"Often in education we're isolated, we close our classroom doors and teach by ourselves," Sugrue says. "This has encouraged us to network, to talk with each other, to share ideas. We have a lot of wonderful teachers with a lot of expertise, and we're tapping into that expertise."
In addition to sparking more communication and resource-sharing between teachers and principals, the grant money has allowed the City School Resource Team to fund the types of professional training for schools that private schools seldom can afford.
"A lot has happened in three years, and we'd love to continue a relationship with Skillman, obviously," Sugrue says. "They've been really, really good to us." The Skillman Foundation's goal with the eight Catholic schools in Detroit is to help them meet its standard for Skillman Good Schools. Its overall aim is to help develop strong education and safe neighborhoods for children in the inner-city. The foundation was formed in 1960 by Rose Skillman, the wife of Robert Skillman, a longtime executive with the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co., known widely as 3M. The couple, now both deceased, had lived in Bloomfield Hills.
In recent year, several Catholic schools in Detroit have received individual grants from the Skillman Foundation.
Related Link:
|
