RESERVE — To help better educate the young minds of students in the St. John the Baptist Public Schools, District administrators are hoping to secure a multi-million dollar grant with help from the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching.

Patrice Pujol, president of the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, said the Teacher Incentive Fund Grant, worth $50 million, is given by the U.S. Department of Education.

“The grant is a great opportunity for St. John to take the vision it already has and really move to the next level in terms of moving student achievement forward in the community,” Pujol said.

One of the things federal readers look at as they judge the grant, Pujol said, is to what degree each school district has community support.

“The more letters of support that we have, the more obvious it is that we have strong community support,” Pujol said. “The stronger the support the stronger the grant will read.”

Superintended Kevin George said letters of support could be sent to his secretary Stacy Waller at swaller@stjohn.k12.la.us.

“We are looking for letters from different people in the community,” George said. “We would like letters from businesses, our employees, our School Board and elected officials. If you’re a business, put the letter on your letterhead. For community members, just put your name and say you support St. John.”

To help garner support and share more about the grant effort, officials and past and present School District employees hosted a town hall June 22.

Pujol said NIET’s mission is to advance educator effectiveness in every classroom. There are systems and tools, Pujol said, NIET uses to help teachers and principals improve and refine their practice as they boost student achievement with individual students.

If St. John secures the grant through the Teacher Incentive Fund, all 11 schools in the district will receive tools provided by NIET.

“Right now in St. John, (the District) uses the Compass rubric for instruction,” Pujol said. “In a few of the schools, we would go with the NIET instructional rubric. The NIET rubric is a more structured rubric. It’s a five-point rubric that really lays out all of the teaching behaviors that the research indicates most effect student achievement.”

A new rubric isn’t the only thing schools will get with the grant.

“In every school there would be at least one master teacher funded by the grant,” Pujol said. “In larger schools there may be more than one. Every school would also receive a data management system and our portal. Our portal is a web-based system that contains hundreds of videos that are tied to the individual indicators on the instructional rubric.”

Pujol said District officials should hear back by the end of August as to whether or not they will be awarded the grant. If awarded, the tools given by NIET will be implemented in the following school year.