Consider the Leon High School Foundation the academic booster club. Each year the Foundation distributes income from the previous year’s fundraising efforts, mainly in the form of mini-grants to teachers, staff and support groups at Leon.
Applications for mini-grants are submitted each school year and a Foundation committee decides which requests will be funded by the end of May. Grant recipients are announced in June.
SMART ROOMS – The Foundation funded various equipment for interactive technology to complete 19 Promethian Classrooms. The technology purchased includes Activexpressions (polly device for students to use interactively with the teacher), ActiveSlates (remote access for board) and ActiveBoards to view content.
Hand Held Dry Erase Boards – Purchased for Social Studies Department to enhance interactive classroom assignments.
Document Cameras – The modern day “overhead projector”, this camera shoots (in color or black and white) entire pages of books, student’s individual assignments on their own paper or any information a teacher may want to project to the students. The document camera can also be hooked up to microscopes so teachers can share viewing to the entire class at once.
The Foundation purchased microscope upgrades for the entire Science Department, Great Ape Set, Hominid Skulls, Corning Digital Hot Plates and Stirrers and a new xerox machine for the department.
The Leon Foundation helped fund books for the bottom 25% of the readers at Leon High School and FOUR FABULOUS ENGLISH TEACHERS are giving up their lunch periods to read books with this group of students to improve reading and FCAT scores.
The Foundation purchased a new curtain in the auditorium, a DBX dual channel microphone and a recording device to be used by all groups that create live performances at Leon High School.
Electronic Dictionaries, Special Field Trips and I-Pads. The Leon Foundation purchased 20 electronic dictionaries for ESE (Exceptional Student Education) students. The Foundation also help fund field trips to enhance Science and Social Studies curriculum to Mission San Luis, Marine Lab and the Challenger Learning Center. I-Pads were purchased to benefit students whose instruction was enhanced utilizing touch screen technology versus the written word.
The Foundation purchased videos, games and interactive software to enhance foreign language instruction as well as a set of books for Spanish & Latin classes.
Since 1981, the Leon High School Foundation has played an instrumental role in supplementing the wonderful academic and extracurricular programs that we offer our students. Their dedication and commitment to our school has been a key to our continued success. The Foundation is a vital member of the Leon Family and our students have greatly benefited from their dedicated service to our school. With their ongoing support we look forward to continuing Leon’s academic tradition and commitment to excellence.
– Billy Epting, Principal
A few years ago, I came across an engaging activity used to teach evolution using several skull replicas. I could envision our students getting deeply involved in the investigation, but was disappointed by the expense of the skulls. Thanks to the Leon Foundation, I was able to purchase nearly three thousand dollars of primate, human, and fossilized hominid skulls for students to observe, measure, and infer evolutionary changes over time in a way that would be impossible without the actual models for students to handle.
– Matt Guyton, Biology Department
Before the data projectors were installed, Leon classrooms only had the corner televisions – impossible to read any subtitles on the screen. The Foundation (several years ago!) provided foreign language with two large televisions and the CD/DVD players. Most of the CD/DVD players are still in use – now connected to the data projectors. The televisions helped tremendously and the grant continues to help students at Leon High School.In addition, class sets of Spanish reader books were granted and are used every year. Students have enjoyed them thoroughly. I wish I could request additional titles!
My set of maps (six LARGE and labeled in Spanish, where Spanish is spoken) is hanging in my classroom. They are sturdy and still in wonderful condition. It is SO easy for me to point to an area of the world every time our curriculum presents an area. Although I am teaching in a small corner of the world, I always feel I have the world around me. Once, a student told me, “Mrs. Taylor, I have learned more geography just sitting in this room.”
The Foundation has been so helpful to foreign language in the past. Gracias!
– Janet Taylor, Foreign Language Teacher
The Leon Band would like to thank the Foundation for their support in constructing a new band tower. This new tower has greatly helped with our marching band rehearsals by allowing us to get a better perspective to clean our halftime show. To have a new, sturdy, high quality tower has and will continue to help our marching band get better everyday in the future. Thank you for your continued
– Brett Pikuritz, Band Director
A few years ago I received a grant from the foundation to buy a classroom set of single topic history books. Time and time again students have borrowed these books or referred to them in class. I am convinced that many of these students would not have read such difficult books, had they not been easily available in the classroom.
– Lewie Tillman, Social Studies