Storm Lake school foundation awards $18,000 in classroom grants
Storm Lake teachers will add physics tools, bilingual texts, a sensory room and other student supports through 21 foundation grants.
Students in Storm Lake classrooms will see new tools, spaces and lessons next school year as the Storm Lake Community School District Foundation awarded 21 classroom educator incentive grants totaling $18,000. The grants were announced during end-of-year events at district buildings on Wednesday morning, May 28, with foundation president Matt Phillips and board member Mike Porsch helping present the awards.
The funding is aimed at projects teachers already have in mind but cannot easily cover through regular district budgets. That makes the grants especially concrete at the classroom level: physics and math support at Storm Lake High School, an algebra and business project, an emotional wellness kit, agriculture curriculum expansion, a middle-school art project, literacy support through school libraries, a reset room for CORE classes, and pre-K sensory room and cultural-connection projects.
Other grants will put LCD tablets in students’ hands, support a magnet-discovery project and geography lessons, add flexible seating, strengthen biliteracy scaffolding, bring in Spanish read-aloud texts, expand a Big Buddies program and restock older Lego kits. Taken together, the projects reach from pre-K through high school and mix academic support with social-emotional learning, which has become a defining need in classrooms serving a diverse student body.
The foundation has said the grants are meant to support work that cannot be accomplished with current district funds and to help teachers carry out school-improvement goals they have already identified. In Storm Lake, that matters. The district launched a dual-language English-Spanish program with 45 kindergartners to serve a growing Spanish-speaking population, and later reporting showed 74 Latinx educators in the district. The district also reported just over 2,600 students in 2025-26 after losing 40 from the prior year, adding pressure to stretch resources carefully.
This year’s awards continue an established pattern. The foundation funded 19 classroom educator incentive grants totaling $16,200 for the 2025-26 school year, 12 grants totaling $15,000 for 2024-25, 18 grants totaling $18,000 for 2023-24, 11 grants totaling $15,000 for 2022-23 and nine grants totaling $7,500 for 2018-19. Recent Trivia Night fundraisers have helped keep the program moving, raising $60,900 in 2025 and $63,000 in 2026, after earlier events brought in $54,500, $56,000, $50,000 and $35,000.
Porsch, who was publicly honored by the district in December for decades of service, has long been tied to the foundation’s work. The latest grants show that local philanthropy remains a practical force in Storm Lake schools, where relatively small awards can change what students actually use, read, build and experience in class next year.
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