Secrets to Funding Creative Education Projects in Public Schools

In this S1E6 interview, discover how Executive Director Steve Manley and educator Joyce Putnam with the Ithaca Public Education Initiative (IPEI) transformed the Ithaca City School District by creating innovative funding solutions that support teachers, boost student engagement, and strengthen parent involvement. In this inspiring episode, learn from Steve Joyce about building sustainable community partnerships that provide real resources for classrooms.

What You'll Learn:
• How to create independent school foundations that work alongside districts
• Three different grant types that fund everything from supplies to $10,000 projects
• Proven strategies for connecting classrooms to community partners
• Creative fundraising ideas beyond traditional events
• How to build home-school connections through collaborative programs
• Steps to enhance student engagement through experiential learning
• Ways to support new teachers and provide ongoing teacher support

Perfect for:
Teachers seeking additional classroom resources, education coaches looking for funding strategies, school administrators wanting to improve school culture, parents interested in supporting their schools, and anyone passionate about education transformation.

Key Takeaways:
- IPEI has supported innovative teaching methods for 25 years
- Grants range from $500-$10,000 supporting teacher impact and student success
- Community partnerships create lasting change in education
- Simple application processes with teacher coaching support
- Programs like "Kids Discover the Trail" build connections between schools

Episode Mentions:

Ithaca Public Education Initiative 

• Mission, Vision, Values
• Staff and Board of Directors
• Grant Information & Applications
• Events:
  • Adult Spelling Bee
  • Scavenger Hunt
  • Disc Golf Event
• Kids Discover the Trail (KDT)
• Support IPEI
• Donate to IPEI
• Contact IPEI

Whether you're a teacher, parent, school leader, or education advocate, this conversation offers practical solutions for creating thriving students and empowered educators in your community.

Chapters
0:00 - Introduction to IPEI and Guests
1:12 - Inspiring Educators Discussion
2:53 - What is IPEI and How It Started
5:23 - Mission and Community Connections
7:26 - Real Impact Stories from Local Schools
8:13 - How to Apply for Grants
9:06 - Three Types of Grants Available
13:05 - Success Stories: 3D Printing and Ancient Civilizations
16:05 - Fundraising Events and Community Engagement
19:03 - Kids Discover the Trail Program
21:28 - Building School Connections and Final Thoughts

When teachers, coaches, administrators, and families grow together, they create schools where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged, supported, and ready to thrive.

Transcript

Schoolutions –S1 E6: When Public School Resources Are Low, a Community Steps Up - All About Ithaca Public Education Initiative (IPEI) with Steve Manley and Joyce Putnam

[00:00:00] Olivia: Welcome to Schoolutions, where listening will leave you inspired by solutions to issues you or others you know may be struggling with in the public education system today. I am Olivia Wahl, and I'm excited to introduce you to my guests, Steve Manley and Joyce Putnam. Steve was a classroom teacher for 12 years.

[00:00:22] Olivia: He designed experiential middle school leadership curricula for two years before moving to Ithaca, New York with his beautiful family and taking on the role of Executive Director at Ithaca Public Education Initiative, also known as IPEI in 2016. Joyce Putnam began her teaching career in 1971 as a middle school teacher.

[00:00:43] Olivia: Her entire career was in middle school and always teaching with a team of teachers. She taught science and depending on the configuration of the team, taught math or ELA, also known as English Language Arts. Joyce served as Elementary Science Curriculum Coordinator, as well as her middle school's Science Department Chair.

[00:01:02] Olivia: She retired in June of 2006 and has been active in some capacity with IPEI since retiring. Welcome Steve and Joyce. 

[00:01:10] Steve: Thanks for having us, Olivia. 

[00:01:10] Joyce: Thank you.

[00:01:11] Steve: It's exciting to be here.

[00:01:12] Olivia: I love to kick off every show by asking my guests, who is an inspiring educator in your life?

[00:01:19] Steve: I always go back to two. And I like to refer back to being a high school student.

[00:01:25] Steve: And in my ninth grade year, Noel Breger, who was a teacher at Archmere Academy was that young, energetic history teacher who taught by standing on desks and walking on windowsills, and inspired me to consider going into the classroom. And Academy, the Chaplain and Headmaster during my time, was a leader full of love and joy for his students.

[00:01:52] Steve: And I took both of those two as my role models for energy and joy and hope to take it into the classroom. 

[00:02:00] Olivia: Wonderful. Joyce, how about you? 

[00:02:02] Joyce: I, I have a very different take on your question. I am inspired by all of our grant applicants in the Ithaca City School District. Those are my inspiration every day

[00:02:13] Joyce: And teaching was not something that I set as a goal going into college, but I came out as a teacher. These teachers in the Ithaca City School District who go beyond what is necessary to do for their classroom and teaching. Teachers that provide creative, innovative activities that really engage the students.

[00:02:34] Joyce: And I'll tell you, it takes extra time, effort, energy applying to IPEI is the easy part actually executing is the challenge and I am so impressed with how many people go above and beyond in the Ithaca City School District. They are my inspiration. 

[00:02:53] Olivia: Joyce speaking to that, we need to tell our listeners what is IPEI and how does it support teachers, students, caregivers, families in the Ithaca area?

[00:03:03] Olivia: An issue that many school districts face that I am excited to speak to today is the lack of resources to support needs of students. I need our listeners to hear about how Ithaca Public Education Initiative came to be 25 years ago. Joyce, can you share that story? 

[00:03:23] Joyce: I would love to share that story. I think parents in the district always appreciated all that the teachers were doing, but what they were starting to notice, and it wasn't just parents, it was the community itself, is resources were becoming more and more limited.

[00:03:38] Joyce: There was a need to support the district in some way. A speaker was in town and the Community Foundation here in Ithaca gathered and hosted people from businesses, uh, nonprofits, teachers, administrators, uh, Town and Gown was a big thing and they had people from the colleges and all sorts of community organizations, and they came together and they listened to the speaker.

[00:04:03] Joyce: Then after the speaker, there was a group of people who just said: You know what? We need to talk more about that issue. And they met on a monthly basis. For months they were meeting together. People like, um, Liz Seidel, Ralph Jones, Stuart Beski, Jennifer Engel, Henry Tyson, Terry Burns, and later on they brought in people from Town and Gown like Chuck Brodhead.

[00:04:28] Joyce: They decided they could do a school foundation, but they did want it to be independent of the Ithaca City School District. They knew they wanted to be a nonprofit. They knew that they wanted to it to be for the Ithaca City School District, but not connected or tied to the Ithaca City Schools district. So, the initial funding actually was by this group of people, and they didn't really have an idea for fundraiser.

[00:04:56] Joyce: The “Bee” (IPEI Spelling Bee) actually was started and the first three years, the “Bee” was the only funding. And if they made a thousand, they gave away a thousand, and if they made 5,000. They gave away 5,000, they soon realized they needed to proceed further. 

[00:05:10] Olivia: By “Bee” you mean the Spelling Bee. That is still a legendary event that occurs at in Ithaca, New York.

[00:05:17] Olivia: Steve, I'd love for you to speak to the importance of this being connected with the school district. 

[00:05:23] Steve: We are deeply connected to our school district, but we are an independent entity and it is through the dedication of our funders and our local community members, individuals, businesses, organizations that make our funding pool available to our teachers, our students, our staff, and our administrators within the 12 Ithaca City schools.

[00:05:49] Steve: So, while we are not a part of the school district, we stand next to them and work in support of them.

[00:05:56] Olivia: Can you speak to the mission, vision, values that IPEI holds? 

[00:06:00] Steve: IPEI believes that education of every student within our school district, 12 schools, eight, elementary, two middle, and two high schools, can be enhanced through community connections and support.

[00:06:15] Steve: And that turns around in work where we facilitate community connections, bringing our community into relationship with our schools, our students, and our classrooms. We bring the community to support students through engagement with what a school is doing, collaboration with the work that they are undertaking, gifts that individuals, businesses and organizations can make to IPEI and grants, which we make available to teachers, staff, students, and administrators in the support of innovative educational opportunities as well as meeting immediate needs for our students and for our classrooms. 

[00:07:00] Olivia: I know my younger son, Henry, I highlighted his teacher, Jake Chernikoff, his third grade teacher who benefited from an IPEI grant and was able to publish a book, Amazing Activists with his class because he did apply and receive a grant from IPEI. So, our children, the community, the world is actually impacted, uh, by IPEI. There's a gorgeous ripple effect. 

[00:07:26] Steve: Last night we saw another group of students at our board of education biweekly meeting, speaking to an issue around safe drinking water, plastic cup, and bottles in Beverly J. Martin Elementary School.

[00:07:40] Steve: And the work, the research that they had done to bring their studies to the leaders of our school district was funded in part by an IPEI grant and was innovatively pioneered by the two teachers of the fifth grade at Beverly J. Martin. So, a partnership, a connection, and a sharing of resources.

[00:08:02] Olivia: Wonderful. Joyce, let's pretend I'm a teacher with Ithaca City School District. It's a good place to be. How in the world do I even start to apply for a grant. What do I do? Where do I go? 

[00:08:13] Joyce: Well, first of all, we have a website, and the website is fabulous and um, has all the information they will need, all the applications, all the questions answered.

[00:08:25] Joyce: However, we are always open to phone calls at any time for any questions throughout the process that I'm gonna speak about, and we encourage people to touch base with us through email, text, phone, whatever. 

[00:08:39] Olivia: I will make sure to include the website, the phone numbers, email, whatever information you'd like in our show notes so guests and listeners can hear and have access to that information if they want to reach out.

[00:08:51] Olivia: Just so you know. 

[00:08:52] Joyce: Thank you. 

[00:08:53] Steve: We're also happy to hear from individuals who wanna talk more about what IPEI or similar groups could do for their schools outside of Ithaca.

[00:09:02] Olivia: Wonderful. So, Joyce, talk to us about those grants. 

[00:09:06] Joyce: We have three, uh, distinctly different grants. The grant opportunities are for, as Steve said, teachers, staff, students, community members.

[00:09:19] Joyce: Originally it was, uh, a grant to connect classrooms to community that the members came up with, and that grant still exists. That grant is one of our grants that we give out very frequently, teachers are asked to have a community partner. And with that community partner, they enhance their classroom learning because it's skills or abilities that they do not have, but that can come into their classroom.

[00:09:48] Joyce: And we fund those up to $1,750 now, and they're called teacher grants. And a nice thing about teacher grants is you can reapply for a teacher grant up to three years. So, if it is funded and you would like to continue that funding, there is that opportunity with teacher grants. What was realized by the group that started this, that it was the supply issue, the materials issue, the nitty gritty of a classroom that was lacking.

[00:10:16] Joyce: And so, they created a grant of $500 and now up to $750 to supply those materials and came up with a name Red and Gold. 

[00:10:26] Olivia: They're the colors of the Ithaca City School District.

[00:10:27] Joyce: Red and Gold Grants can be requested by students, teachers, parents, community members, although if it's a community member, they do need to have a sponsor with a teacher or somebody employed by the district.

[00:10:41] Joyce: And uh, they're one-time only grants. So, it's something that, that you came up with a great idea. The budget has already been done in the district, but you need funding and they are critical. They are one time, critical. And we really found many, many people in need of those during COVID.

[00:10:59] Olivia: Yes. 

[00:11:00] Joyce: When COVID hit, we put on an extra round of situational grants to supply those needs that nobody saw coming, and that was critical I think for our teachers.

[00:11:09] Joyce: Our biggest grant offering is one that we connect classrooms within a building, grade levels within a building, classrooms between buildings, or actually at times we have connected all eight elementary schools. We have fabulous librarians that have brought in speakers. And they can be up to $10,000.

[00:11:31] Joyce: That application is a little more, has more steps in it than the regular application. The first two I spoke about go directly to the Grants Committee, a fabulous Grants Committee that meets and reviews all of them after reading them prior to the meeting and asks questions and we thoroughly vet them and we can approve those.

[00:11:53] Joyce: I chair the Grants Committee and we can approve those immediately. The Connecting Classroom Grants, because they are up to $10,000, have a few more steps. The initial applicant gives a letter of interest. Then it goes to the Grants Committee. They review it and say: Whoa! We'd like to hear more about this.

[00:12:10] Joyce: And then it goes to a formal application. And after the formal application is submitted to the Grants Committee, we identify a person on the Grants Committee who will be the liaison and the support person for this grant. 

[00:12:24] Olivia: Wow. 

[00:12:25] Joyce: And they work with the grant applicant so that it can move forward. And moving forward means to be introduced to the the IPEI board because final approval must come from the board because of the size of the grant.

[00:12:38] Joyce: And so that is the process, and it can be done online and it can be supported by IPEI members.

[00:12:46] Olivia: When my older son, who's now a freshman at Ithaca High School, was in second grade, his magnificent second grade teacher, Allison Trdan, Belle Sherman Elementary, applied for a grant and I, I was just, neatening up Benjamin's room the other day and noticed two tiny little Minecraft replicas of buildings.

[00:13:05] Olivia: And I, I thought, oh my goodness, I was taken back to his second grade year, and Allison so brilliantly took that class, and I know numerous classes after, through the process of designing a community and then with an IPEI grant, took the children to the Cornell 3-D Printing Lab when 3-D printing was not well known or in vogue as it is now, and they got to create those visions of the community in a 3-D version.

[00:13:34] Olivia: And he still has them. He's 14. He was eight years old. Not only does IPEI build connections with community members, it also builds connection across content areas within a school building. Which is amazing! I know when Benjamin was in sixth grade, his brilliant English (ELA) and Social Studies teacher Cara Salibrici…

[00:13:57] Olivia: His ELA teacher, Gina Amici, also applied and received an IPEI Grant. Joyce, are you able to share about that grant? 

[00:14:06] Joyce: Well, that happened to be a Teacher Grant. And so, uh, they had the opportunity again to re-up that, which they did do. And it was at a culminating event where their studies in school of ancient cultures and all the students had their project displayed throughout the cafeteria along with anything else the art teacher had things displayed.

[00:14:28] Joyce: It was just a fabulous night, a crowded room. And children were given the opportunity to share with adults and they had their little spiels all ready to go. Um, what they had learned and the connections they had made. And you know, a child has learned when they can present to someone else, and it was a fabulous idea they came up with and a fabulous execution that I don't think anyone would miss. Community members were there. It was a delightful evening.

[00:14:57] Olivia: It was wonderful. And I remember the children not just presented, but they actually took on the roles of individuals within their civilizations that they did copious amounts of research to learn and study. Building and creating the costumes, uh, creating games that would've made sense in that time period with different mathematical and monetary systems.

[00:15:18] Olivia: It was gobsmacking, it knocked my socks off. I know. And my younger son, Henry, was so small at that time and he was just enamored by everything that was occurring and that cafeteria. Um, so I, it just amazing. Teachers right now are so tired, and the thought of having a liaison to support me through the process, it's not as daunting if I need that grant.

[00:15:41] Olivia: I, I know there's someone I can reach out to. I, I don't know how to fill out a grant application perhaps. And I have that support and help, so that's magnificent. Um, I know an event with IPEI that is near and dear to my heart is the Spelling Bee. I have participated with my family members and friends.

[00:15:58] Olivia: Steve, I'd love for you to illuminate the different events and ways that you do fundraising for IPEI. 

[00:16:05] Steve: Absolutely. Our spelling bee wouldn't be anything without, uh, your support and the support of so many people in our community. IPEI, as we have shared, is dependent on community support to make and create the pool of funding we make available to our teachers in schools for the benefit of students.

[00:16:24] Steve: Since our beginning, IPEI has hosted an Adult Spelling Bee, which is exactly like you either love to remember or fear to remember, but we have some tweaks on it and we allow you to spell with a team and write your words on the whiteboard. But it is a public event. We took an opportunity with the changes in our world around COVID and moved from a 250-person one day event to changing the Adult Spelling Bee as my board member put it, lean into the word adult and partnered with two local, uh, brewers, one of cider.

[00:17:03] Steve: So, I guess technically a fermenter. And we have hosted this year's spelling bees at a local brewery. We have another upcoming one at a cidery in the spring. Recognizing that we were leaning away from a family-centered event and wanting to include families in all that we do. We created a new fundraising event on a family-centered Scavenger Hunt where families could register at an entry point that they could find available to themselves.

[00:17:32] Steve: It is a fundraiser for us and we need those dollars to give them away, but we set a entry point and also had a pay what you can option. We don't want any family to not join us in a fund friendly activity because times are really hard right now.

[00:17:48] Steve: Over 90 groups joined us last year for our first scavenger hunt and wandered downtown Ithaca looking for spots of art and culture. And most of them found most of them that we set them out on the hunt for. And we look forward to hosting that again in April of this year. We are working with lots of small organizations around town, not only just to invite their own gifts, but to find ways to engage our community.

[00:18:14] Steve: And a local disc golf community, DiscIthaca has helped us create, for the last three years, a small charitable Disc Golf Tournament. We're working on this year's calendar dates for June or July, but again, a new way to engage a different community of potential donors and offer them a fun activity which in doing so and participating, whether through registration or sponsoring as you have done both helps our students learn and helps our classrooms have the resources that they need. 

[00:18:46] Olivia: Steve, we have to wrap our conversation soon, but I cannot go with, without mentioning Kids Discover the Trail. It has had such a beautiful impact on my boys’ life of learning and exploring museums in different places in Ithaca that they had not been before in many cases.

[00:19:03] Olivia: So, would you speak to that? 

[00:19:04] Steve: Certainly. IPEI is proud to have brought together several of the leading educational institutions in and around Tompkins County and create field experiences, aka field trips that tie to our state standards so that every student in the Ithaca City school Districts’ eight elementary schools, over the course of their time in that school, travel to a site in the county, whether it be the Science Center, which is our local science center, or the, uh, public library, or a visit to the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell.

[00:19:41] Steve: Any of these sites have a planned hands-on curriculum, which ties to the State Standards in a focus on equity and a focus on making sure we include every school in every experience where we can. Participate in these activities every year, and this is done as a partnership, again, collaborating between organizations in Ithaca, around Tompkins County and bringing together the dedication, the energy, the time and treasure of our community to support our schools and support our students.

[00:20:18] Olivia: I would say one of the most impactful pieces of that is that the schools partner with another building. And I know both of my boys benefited from having a pen pal of sorts, which is so novel these days, but it was wonderful. And they would receive letters and exchange and build relationships with children in another school.

[00:20:39] Olivia: And then the field trip is with that buddy. So, it's just amazing. 

[00:20:44] Steve: That is a planned, under-the-surface curriculum of our Kids Discover the Trail Program because as we've mentioned, we have eight elementary schools. We have two middle schools. So, over the course of their trajectory, four of these elementary schools will merge into one middle school.

[00:21:03] Steve: Environment and we are creating a system where these students have had a series of common experiences, sometimes even together, as you mentioned, with other students who they now are in middle school with. We couldn't do this work without the partnership and planning of our school district who supports the idea and the funding that we're able to come up with, with the logistics of making it possible.

[00:21:28] Olivia: Absolutely. You both are magnificent with creating these connections, your time, your energy, your love for the children, the families, the community. It, it makes Ithaca, New York a really special place to live and to be. I am most grateful that we can shine a light on the work that IPEI does for our area.

[00:21:46] Olivia: I sure hope our listeners reach out to learn more, and maybe we can make some connections outside of Ithaca, New York and learn from each other. Thank you both so much. 

[00:21:56] Joyce: Thank you. Thank you so much. 

[00:21:58] Steve: Thank you, Olivia, and thanks for shedding a light and, and trying to answer the questions and, and sharing how people are meeting the challenges of, of their place and their time.

[00:22:06] Olivia: Take care.