SALYERSVILLE – A big announcement about grant funding for Magoffin County Schools was made last Friday, May 8.
At an event held at the Magoffin County High School, the USDA announced that Magoffin County Schools has been awarded $836,348 RSDLT grant to connect Magoffin County students to people all over the world, a grant awarded to only eight school districts in the state.
Kentucky State Director for the USDA Rural Development Travis Burton said, “Today’s announcement reflects a priority of the Trump administration and of Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, and that is by strengthening rural America by strengthening essential services like education. I don’t think there’s any doubt how valuable distance learning can be in the classroom. We learned a lot a few years back during COVID, some good, some bad, but one of the good things that came from that time period was how we can better utilize technology to strengthen our education system and better education for our students. Today, as you’re well aware, we’re celebrating a grant and this grant is designed to help close the digital divide and ensure the quality of a Magoffin County student’s education is not determined by anything other than the willingness of the team, the leadership of the teachers to roll up their sleeves and work hard and make things happen for their students.”
The grant funding will pay for interactive technology that will put Magoffin County students face-to-face and voice-to-voice with essentially anyone. A computer and 75” interactive screen will be placed in every classroom.
Minerva Arnett, over Federal Programs for Magoffin County Schools, said, “Each of the screens that will be installed in our classrooms are interactive panels, where students can interact with the person at the other end of the screen, so it’s two-way communication. Before it was only one-way communication, where we could only see the person on the other side, but we could not interact back and forth. With this two-way communication, professors from college campuses, other people in other parts of the world can communicate with our students. We can also access more healthcare and telemedicine, which is very vital in our part of Eastern Kentucky, so it’s just a great opportunity for our kids to be able to communicate with others in other places.”
“This is a great step forward and I’ll tell you, as senator, we have the largest senate district in Kentucky’s history – there’s no other district as big as ours,” Senator Brandon Smith said. “I take a lot of time to go through each and every one of my schools out there to get a chance to see what kind of an education you’re getting. What you think about what’s happening in your classroom? What’s important to you? I’ve never seen a school system like this. All the way down through the grade school and the middle school, there is every opportunity to challenge and make education fun for you. All the way fast forward to what I saw here (at the high school) and what they’re offering you for skills well beyond anything we’ve seen so you come out of here ready to work. You don’t have to have that training – you’re getting it here. That’s education putting its best foot forward and that’s something we’re always happy to put our money in and our dollars behind.”
Representative John Blanton explained why the grant was so important for the students present during the announcement on Friday, stating, “This is connectivity that’s not only going to connect you to people in the region, but throughout the world. It’s going to provide greater access for great learning abilities for each and every school and each and every student in this county, and that’s something to be proud of and that’s something to be appreciative of.”
Magoffin County Schools Superintendent Chris Meadows said, “You students are all somewhere in the curriculum, some in Year 1 and some in Year 2, in the Leader in Me. One of your habits you study is to synergize – to collaborate, to come together, to take those individual differences and set them aside and to work together to do what’s best and to think about the end result and to get things done. So, that’s how you get to the point that you are awarded over $800,000 in grant funds, because of people who are willing to come to the table, to put individual differences aside and to work together to synergize. That’s how you get to that point. We celebrate today the dollar amount, but we celebrate people’s willingness to come together and say, ‘Here’s the way things are now. What can we do to make tomorrow better?’”
He emphasized this was an investment in the students and that’s really what they were celebrating at Friday’s event.
Magoffin County had to meet a number of criteria in order to receive the grant, including availability of healthcare in the area, population numbers, poverty levels, employment ratios, and other items that showed the need here in Eastern Kentucky, Arnett explained.
Out of 277 applications for the grant funding, only eight school districts received the RSDLT grant.
Superintendent Meadows explained they are looking at more exciting announcements to be made soon.
“We’ve had a really good couple of years with grant opportunities and we do have some other things to announce and celebrate in addition to today,” Meadows said. “Things that reflect on literacy – we’ve had over $1 million literacy grant. We are getting ready to install some new technology in every classroom I think teachers will really enjoy. That grant came in at a half a million dollars. Then, just most recently our middle school has been the recipient of $1 million grant that will be there to target students in need. So, we’re very excited about several of the opportunities that are coming our way.”
