Michigan City Area Schools has received a planning grant of $50,000 under Lilly Endowment Inc.’s Comprehensive Counseling Initiative for Indiana K-12 Students. The aim of the Counseling Initiative is to increase the number of Indiana students who are emotionally healthy, achieve academic success, and graduate from high school prepared for postsecondary opportunities.
MCAS is one of more than 280 Indiana public school corporations and charter schools receiving planning grants through the initiative. These grants will help recipients prepare competitive proposals for a larger Lilly Endowment counseling implementation grant, due this spring. The implementation grants will award up to $100 per enrolled student to school districts, to aid them in strengthening counseling programs.
MCAS will use its planning grant to develop a “cradle to career continuum” proposal for K-12 counseling services. Planning funds will support a comprehensive data analysis, best-practices study groups and conferences, site visits, and listening sessions involving staff, students, parents, and community partners.
“The Lilly Endowment initiative aligns with our districtwide improvement efforts,” said Dr. Barbara Eason-Watkins, MCAS Superintendent. “These funds will help us ensure that we have a deep understanding of the emotional and academic needs of our students, and can identify resources and partners in our community to help us ensure our students graduate from high school well-prepared for college and careers.”
“Often, schools struggle to balance addressing students’ college and career counseling needs with addressing their social and emotional needs,” said Sara B. Cobb, Lilly Endowment’s vice president for education. “We believe that enhancing and expanding in a comprehensive way the academic, college, career and social and emotional counseling in Indiana schools could help address the state’s educational attainment and economic challenges.”
Lilly Endowment Inc. is an Indianapolis-based private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by three members of the Lilly family - J.K. Lilly Sr. and sons J.K. Jr. and Eli - through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly & Company. The Endowment is primarily committed to the causes of community development, education and religion and has a special commitment to its hometown, Indianapolis, and its home state, Indiana.