Something exciting is growing at Miner Elementary!

Miner Elementary School, the Miner Parent Teacher Organization, and Miner's urban farming partner Cultivate the City are proud to announce that Miner has been awarded a two-year, $35,000 grant to build and grow its school garden program. The grant, from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, is to support staff as they grow the number of students and teachers who use the garden to teach and to learn.
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“The garden is already an amazing space, but this grant will push the opportunities to the next level for all of our scholars as we focus on educating the whole child,” said Principal Bruce Jackson.

Cultivate the City, Miner and the PTO will work together to integrate experiential learning from the gardens into school programming and instruction, particularly around healthy eating and STEM lessons; expand the garden infrastructure; and help students and teachers use and apply urban farming in their educational and personal lives.

"We're so excited to help take the Miner garden to the next level and getting more little hands in the dirt,” said Niraj Ray, the founder of Cultivate the City.

Miner will have two grant-funded garden staff:

• Dan Weisshaar from Cultivate the City will act as school garden manager, focused on maintaining the garden and providing urban agriculture expertise to the school
• Mr. Christin Riddick, a second-grade math teacher, will act as school garden coordinator, focused on integrating garden instruction throughout the school and its programs

Miner administrators, the PTO and Cultivate the City kicked off grant implementation with OSSE on Thursday morning and are ready to get started as soon as the grant become active on October 1.

“We've been a proud partner of Cultivate the City for the past two years as we've worked together to revitalize Miner’s incredible gardens,” said David Treat, president of the PTO. “We are grateful for their expertise in helping Miner take the next steps to transform our gardens into an instructional space, and we hope it becomes a source of pride for our students, teachers, families, and community.”

The Miner PTO and Cultivate the City developed the grant application on behalf of Miner. Lindsey Jones-Renaud, the chair of the PTO's Fundraising & Grants Committee, and Victoria Mirowski of Cultivate the City, lead the effort to develop, write, and submit the grant application to OSSE. The school garden program they designed ensures that Miner will fulfill the grant requirements to broaden and integrate garden, nutrition, and STEM-related instruction throughout Miner. The Miner community greatly appreciates the work of Lindsey, Victoria, and all who helped bring this grant to Miner!