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OCEANFIRST GRANTS $55,000 TO BOOST BRICK SCHOOL LIBRARIES
By Catherine Snipe
Brick township schools will receive several tens of thousands of dollars in grants focused on library and media upgrades.
Three Brick township schools will be the recipients of an OceanFirst Foundation School Library grant this month.
Each year, the OceanFirst Foundation awards School Library grants to schools in their target communities to help improve the capacity of school libraries and encourage a love of reading and learning in students. Two township high schools and an elementary school received the funding, which totals $55,000.
Brick Township Memorial High School received a $25,000 grant for its "Learning Resource Center: Without Walls" project. The money will allow the school to buy additional computers and e-books.
Herbertsville Elementary School received a $25,000 grant for their "Closing the Generation Gap" project.
And finally, Brick Township High School received a $5,000 grant for its "Reading Across the Generations: Creating Lifelong Learners" project.
Love for the school libraries didn't just come from the local bank, either. The Brick Township council showed its appreciation at its meeting this week to the librarians who lead the media centers at the winning schools. The council said the grants would not have been awarded to these schools without the exceptional efforts of the librarians of those schools.
That library staff includes: Brick Township Memorial High School's Kathryn Oles and Roberta Bennett, Brick Township High School's Cecilia Ruegsegger and Marianne Kerrigan, and Herbertsville Elementary School's Meghan Dunn.
The council, in a resolution of support to the board of education, applauded their efforts, stating "their efforts to secure these grants and for their invaluable contributions to the education of Brick Township's young people."
According to the OceanFirst Foundation, the grant program sets out to help build the capacity of school libraries and to encourage a love of reading and learning among students at schools in the OceanFirst Bank
service area.
Each year, the foundation awards $250,000 - 10 grants of $25,000 - to school libraries. The money goes toward updating, extending and diversifying book collections.
However, it is also awarded for special programs aimed at fostering a love of reading, or for special equipment. The grants are made out to an individual school, not a district, and each school is allowed to apply once, even though it may have several library services.
Last year's recipients included towns spread throughout Monmouth and Ocean counties, including Point Pleasant Borough High School, who used the grant to buy books for students to read simply for enjoyment. The grant also went toward audio visual materials to support the curriculum.
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