We offer two scholarships to graduating seniors that attended our elementary schools. Community involvement, schools activities and GPA are considered.

We have a scholarship program for graduating seniors at our high school. Each year we vote on how many we are going to give and how much. This year we give 3 students $1000 each. Generally, this has been pretty routine, unless our funds are lower than normal for the year. Each applicant must meet criteria such as being a current resident of our town and must have attended our schools for 5 years. There is a committee of parents who review the applications and determine who will receive these scholarships. The criteria is fianancial need, leadership and activities for their years of high school, an essay, and academics.

We are getting ready to review our applicants next week. This year we have 12 applicants. We award the scholarships at the high schools awards ceremony in June.

Our PTO has two scholarship programs. One was started several years ago by some students: we give a scholarship to a graduating senior who attended our elementary school. They fill out an application and submit a paper, a committee of parents and teachers selects a winner and we then send the award to the college they will be attending. We have given this scholarship to some absolutely amazing kids.

The second scholarship was established at the end of last school year and we just used it this past week. Gifted students are eligible to attend classes at our local community college during the summer, however last year I just happened to ask the gifted program teacher if there were kids who couldn't afford to go and she told me she had one student who was very deserving. My husband and I paid for his tuition and then I presented the scholarship idea to the PTO. We set aside enough money for two students to receive the funding, but had only one student that needed it this year. It makes us all feel good to know that we are helping a child who has worked so hard and excels in his educational efforts.

Not only do some of my schools offer a scholarship to the teachers to attend specific trainings, but students who cannot afford a field trip or need assistance buying school supplies. The students that recieve it are chosen by the school counselor as they are usually the ones that are most familiar with the financial capabilities of the families.
At the council level, we scholarship units to attend convention and the level we offer depends on the financial capabilities of the unit (i.e. if a school has only raised $1,500 on fundraisers will get it as opposed to the one that earned $54,000 and the offer is made to all) We also are working on offering scholarships to schools that need help with other things-our first being a school that is having trouble getting money for a playground, we will contribute to that goal.
We don't have any guidelines at this point, just helping those that ask but as it grows, we will likely have guidelines and a brief application process.

We have set in our budget a field trip scholarship fund for kids who can't afford a field trip in house or out. Our guidlines are for the child to recieve free or reduced lunch and we do not know who they are but the teachers ask for however many kids they have that meet these rules. We also do a College Scholarship for a senior how attended our elemenatry school and has a certian grade ave. and we read the essays they submit with their names blacked out and select two winners. Hope this helps!

Our 5th grade students are invited to a 4-H camp in the spring of every year. This 3 day/2 night camp usually costs $80 per student. With the high percentage of free or reduced lunch that we have in our school, we normally have a good many who could use a scholarship to go. Every year we budget in a couple scholarships or a set amount to offset the cost. Normally we allow the school personnel...Principal and 5th grade teachers to make the decisions on who will receive our given budgeted amount. As a PTO you can only do what you can and anything is always better than nothing. [img]smile.gif[/img]