Ohio Department of Education awards $4.2 million to Marion City Schools for partnerships

Marion City Schools has recently been awarded a $4.2 million Summer Learning and Afterschool Opportunities grant from the Ohio Department of Education to support community partnerships and address students' needs outside the classroom.

This grant funding, which is intended to meet academic and emotional needs that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic, is a portion of $89 million that the Ohio Department of Education is awarding to 161 community-based partners across the state from over 700 applications.

The district is now partnering with organizations including Marion-Crawford Prevention Programs, the Marion Family YMCA and Marion Technical College to provide both summer and afterschool programming for students most affected by the pandemic, Superintendent Dr. Ron Iarussi explained.

"It requires us to have community partners, and so the first one we received is a partnership with Marion-Crawford Prevention Programs, and that's expanding after school programs," Iarussi said.

"They're going to be able to provide programs like strengthening families, smoking tobacco cessation, all just for health and well-being of students and families," he said.

The district is also looking at using this community-focused funding to expand opportunities with its GEAR UP program which it is continuing through Marion Technical College after the original grant funding expired this year much to the community's lament.

"That will be available to provide career advice and counseling to more students through that," Iarussi said.

The programming resulting from the $4.2 million grant is to begin this summer after a mandatory training for new grantees which took place Tuesday.

Marion Family YMCA Executive Director Theresa Lubke represented the YMCA at this training to equip the organization to launch its programming, which she confirmed will be starting in the summer.

It will be heavily focused on younger learners and filling in the gaps in childcare within the community.

"The YMCA: we actually have four grants with them. We're looking at doing some expansion of doing preschool here. We're also looking at doing some Kindergarten readiness programs," Iarussi said.

Programming offered at the YMCA will also include afterschool opportunities for parents and families, including a Latchkey-type program for families who need childcare or extra support, he explained.

Story by: Sophia Veneziano (740) 564 - 5243 | sveneziano@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Marion Star: Marion City Schools awarded $4.2 million for community partnerships