On Sept. 22, the U.S. Department of Education announced that the district of Perry Township has won a $6 million federal grant.
Perry Township is the only district in the state to have gotten this grant, which the district will receive in portions over the span of the next three years. A majority of the money is going to go towards increasing teachers’ pay.
“I think all of the things that we’ve already been doing aligned … ,” Principal Amy Boone said. ”That made Perry Township stand out amongst other school districts that may have applied around Indiana.”
Boone additionally states that when it came to what the district needed to do in order to have a chance to get this grant, they had to state how much of the money was going to go towards certain areas of the district such as teacher funding and training.
Furthermore, Assistant Superintendent for K-12 Services Supervisor Jeffery Spencer states that depending on how teachers score on evaluations and if they are in leadership roles, affected accordingly.
“One, it will provide performance based compensation,” Spencer said. “Based on their evaluation scores, they’ll get additional money … That’s one piece. The other piece is over some stipends for our master and mentor teachers, our teachers that are in leadership roles.”
With this information, some teachers have expressed how they are happy for the township for winning the money. They think that it’s a nice gesture for the administration to put forth a majority of the money towards their pay.
However, science teacher Daryl Traylor has mixed feelings about this grant even existing to begin with as it’s primarily a literacy grant that is going to go towards literacy in education.

“I am very proud that we as a district got it and that we are being recognized for making strides … ,” Traylor said. “But I also think it means that we obviously have a need for that kind of grant.”
Even with a majority of the money going toward teachers’ pay, the main goal of this grant is to improve students’ literacy and to then set focus on any of the subgroups that may need additional help.
Assistant Superintendent for Career Jane Pollard says that to reach this goal, the grant will help create some literacy interventions, grow teacher capacity to understand how to teach literacy skills better in every content area, and then work on ensuring they have good systems in place to support that work.
In the end, Director of Elementary Education Star Hardimon says that this grant is an opportunity to continue the good work that has been done in the district.
“We’re articulating a few specific things as it relates to literacy because we know we need to hone in on how to support our students with acquiring language skills and literacy and reading foundational and all those things,” Hardimon said.