Guide to Grants for your School Council

Since March of 2006, the Ontario Ministry of Education has been providing funding to school councils and regional parent groups to encourage parent involvement. Individual school councils have access to two types of funding:
  • Base Funding for Parent Involvement
  • Parents Reaching Out (PRO) Grants for Schools.

    • Base Funding For Parent Involvement

    Each school council receives $500 to assist with parent communication and other parent engagement efforts. School with both an elementary (grades 7-8) and secondary (grades 9-11) stream will receive $500 for each, for a total of $1000.

    The Ministry provides this money to the school board, which in turn gives it to the school principal to give to the school council. Guidelines state that this money is to be used for "mobilization and outreach" activities such as "broadening the number of school events that include parents" and "diversification of communication tools" used to reach parents. School councils are expected to "seek out the advice and ideas of other parents and partners" about how best to spend the money.

    The school council must approve all the expenditures for activites funded with this money. The funds must be spent by the end of the school year. The school board will provide councils with a form for reporting back to the Ministry on how the funds were spent.

    Some ideas for spending this Parent Involvement funding include:
  • Website development
  • Photocopying a parent newsletter
  • A big event hosted by a family of schools (pooling their $ and resources)
  • Funding for a parent open house during education week
  • Host a parent breakfast at school
  • Showcase the school website during a school event
  • Hire someone to collect and input email addresses
  • Sponsoring parents to attend the OAPCE conference (“Weaving the Catholic Partnership”) in Hamilton, April 25–27, 2008
  • Use an established email management service to simplify email communications with parents.
  • Purchase computer software or hardware for council activities

    • Some informative articles about this funding can be found in the Spring 2006 edition of School Advocate (each Council Chair receives two hard copies of this paper).
    For ideas and links to other resources check out The Parent Involvement Centre.

    Parents Reaching Out (PRO) Grants for Schools

    These grants are an additonal source of funding for school councils. In Fall 2006, the Ministry offered a grant program to school councils for projects that enhance the participation of parents who face challenges in getting involved in their children's education.

    To access the funds, school councils had to complete an application form and also pass a motion at a council meeting approving the project proposal. The councils in our Board were very successful and received approval for 48 grants totally $63,000 in funding.
  • Check out the PRO Grants for Schools page on the Ministry of Education website. It describes the grant guidelines, and the application and reporting processes.
  • See the list of Ottawa Catholic School Board Approved PRO Grant Projects for 2006-2007.

    • The PRO Grants Application also includes a reporting section where councils must report the results and account for the cost of their project. Any money left over must be returned to the Ministry, and cannot be used for activities other than what was specified in the application.

    Councils are encouraged to discuss ideas for this funding at their meetings, and to share these ideas with the CSPA exec. CSPA would like to maintain an ongoing list of ideas to circulate to councils this year and in the future. Click here to email us your council's ideas.

    Last Updated: 2008-09-24

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