Honored to be Honored

Highline Schools Foundation for Excellence, our partner since MAD Grants began, honored us at their first Gifts of the Heart luncheon: 

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PRESS RELEASE

MAD Grants awards 17 grants to Highline District Schools

Seventh year of grant program in Highline and Portland School Districts

BASEL, SWITZERLAND, December 2, 2008 – More than 2,000 students in the Highline School District 401 will benefit from MAD Grants this year through 17 projects across the District.  

MAD Grants is a program that awards small grants ($25 - $1,000) to educators in the Highline School District and Portland (OR) Schools. The program was started in 2002 by two Northwesterners: Chris Blumenthal, a 1981 graduate of Grant High School in Portland  and Nanci Tangeman, a 1979 graduate of Mt. Rainier High School in Des Moines, WA.

Thus far, close to 140 projects have been funded over seven years. 

“There was a lot of interest in Science this year,” says Blumenthal. “And we funded a wide range of wildlife and multicultural projects.”

A favorite this year was providing funds for fifth and sixth graders in the English Language Learners (ELL)  program at Seahurst Elementary to attend Camp Waskowitz. “We’ve lived away from our home country for 15 years,” says Tangeman. “We want the students and their families to feel as welcome here as we’ve always felt in our adopted countries.”

Thanks to a MAD Grant, students at the Aviation High School will work with younger students at Midway Elementary to study basic physical and mathematical principles using K’Nex sets. Highline High School Students will work together in a Tutor Team program. Students will use video, digital photography and audio to tell stories and learn media skills at the Technology, Engineering and Communications School and at the Academy for Citizenship and Empowerment. Young writers at Madrona Elementary will have notebooks to begin their writing careers thanks to a MAD Grant. Both North Hill Elementary and Mt. Rainier High School will host Science Fairs this year with MAD Grants.

“This year we really tried to get back to our roots at MAD Grants by funding those projects that had that extra spark of creativity,” says Blumenthal. “There is such a level of need in the schools that a lot of the requests are for books, buses and equipment. That’s not our role to fund.” The MAD-dest idea this year? Probably Bow Lake Elementary’s Medieval Trebuchet Catapult for flinging projectiles.

Full descriptions of the winning projects are available on the MAD Grants website at www.madgrants.org.

Grants are administered by the Highline Schools Foundation.

For more information about MAD Grants contact Nanci Tangeman at