Grant Elementary to participate in Kids on Course

Zach Johnson is excited.

While his fourth-annual fundraiser the Zach Johnson Foundation Classic is around the corner, the source of the golfer's Monday morning glee was the announcement that Kids on Course — a program providing enrichment services to Van Buren and Harrison elementary schools — will expand to Grant Elementary School in August.

'I never would've thought it'd come to this,' Johnson said, following a short public program at Harrison to share the news.

According to Program Leader Beth Malicki, Grant, Harrison and Van Buren will each receive an anticipated $200,000 in annual funding for the coming school year — an increase from the $175,000 Harrison and Van Buren each got for 2013-14. Malicki is also an anchor for KCRG-TV9, which is owned by The Gazette's parent, The Gazette Company. Those dollars will go toward tutoring, mentoring, mental health assistance and other services for students and their families.

Kids on Course serves 750 students and expanding to Grant is expected to increase that reach to more than 1,000.

After a three-month evaluation process that included site visits and data review earlier this year, the Kids on Course team selected Grant from a pool of three Cedar Rapids Community School District elementary schools.

'We thought that Grant was a school where we felt they needed opportunities outside of the classroom ... for kids to really realize their potential,' said David Savino, a Kids on Course site coordinator at Harrison who will transition to serving as Grant's site coordinator following the end of the six-week Kids on Course University summer program for students.

Among the opportunities Grant students will have once Kids on Course staff members start serving Grant in August are sports, arts, tutoring and college visits.

'We're going to have similar pillars of our program,' Savino said about serving Grant, 'but because the school is different ... we need to be flexible.'

Savino also praised Grant Principal Monica Frey for having 'a vision that matched ours.' Frey, who became the school's interim principal last year and will assume a more permanent role starting with the 2014-15 academic year, shared her excitement Monday as well.

'The impact it can provide for our families and our students is unbelievable,' she said. 'This will be a great way for them to get involved.'

Frey said Kids on Course will help set Grant students on a path toward attending college. She said Grant staff will use office intervention data, test scores and family involvement to gauge the program's success.

She called Grant's population 'great' but noted that many of them lack access to services and opportunities Kids on Course provides.

In 2013-14, 69.1 percent of Grant students qualified for free or reduced-price lunches. That's the seventh highest rate of the district's 21 elementary buildings. Van Buren and Harrison, the two other schools in which Kids on Course operates, with 74.6 percent and 72.4 percent, respectively, rank fourth and fifth.

Kids on Course is in its third year of operation and Johnson said this is only the beginning.

'I hope we have more opportunities like this because it's pretty awesome,' he said. 'We have the ability, potential and the resources to go even further. Nothing is complete.'