BEVERLY — Beverly High School has received a grant for as much as $2 million from the U.S. Department of Education. The money, part of the Smaller Learning Communities grant, will help the school provide students with more personalized and supportive learning experiences.
The school will receive $756,000 in each of the next two years, according to Beverly Superintendent Marie Galinski. The school then has to reapply to get the rest of the money.
Most of it will be spent on teacher training. The training will focus on different styles of learning and how teachers can meet the needs of all types of students, Galinski said.
Some money will go toward developing a "Freshman Academy" to help them make the transition from middle school, Galinski said. The money will also bolster the existing 8.5 program, a summer program that helps just graduated eighth-grade students make the transition to high school. Teachers will also get training on the school's 1 to 1 laptop initiative, a controversial new plan to have every student have an Apple laptop in school by September of next year.
Beverly already has in place programs such as the student advisories, where faculty members are assigned to a group of students for all four years. It is to ensure that every student has at least one adult that they are close to.
"We have over 1,200 kids in the building, so a student could easily get lost or feel like they have nobody to talk to," Galinski said. These types of programs enabled Beverly to get the grant, she said.
"We thought we had a very strong application because of what we had already started," she said.
Only schools with 1,000 or more students are eligible for a Smaller Learning Communities grant.
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