TYLER, Texas — Despite the gloomy weather, exciting things were happening across the Tyler ISD campuses on Tuesday. Teachers and students got to celebrate surprise grants that will positively impact them for years to come.
The Tyler ISD Foundation was on grant patrol putting smiles on teachers' faces for their Grants for Great Ideas program. Ramey Elementary music teacher LePatrick Thomas received the largest grant of the day – just over $11,000.
"This grant is going to go to some much needed updates for our stage and for our cafeteria area. This school was built in 2005 so it’s time to make some well needed updates for our lighting and four our sound system in the cafeteria," Thomas said.
Thomas said that this grant is going to make a huge impact for both students and teachers not only now, but for years to come.
"My vision is to enhance what we’ve already been building on here. We have an awesome music program here and just to have those added necessities is going to make them bigger and better," Thomas said.
The Grants for Great Ideas program is in place to help fund innovative and creative instructional approaches that are not already supported by campus budgets. On Tuesday alone, the program awarded 26 grants totaling nearly $80,000.
Thomas said he’s extremely grateful, mainly for the impact it will make on the kids.
"It warms my heart to know that you guys care enough to even grant us this amount of money, and it also gives me great joy and excitement that our kids are going to get to experience music on a whole new level," Thomas said.
Since the program's creation over 30 years ago, the Tyler ISD Foundation has gifted more than $3.7 million to Tyler ISD, and they don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.