New Albany Floyd County Consolidated School Corporation has received a competitive grant of $1,130,000 from Lilly Endowment Inc. as part of the Endowment’s Comprehensive Counseling Initiative for Indiana K-12 Students.
NAFC is one of only 52 public school corporations and five charter schools in Indiana selected to implement plans to help them meet the complex academic, college, career, and social and emotional counseling needs of their students.
NAFC will use these funds to provide student access to mental health therapists for all of the students who attend the School Corporation.
“We are super excited to take this step forward in helping our students,” said, Dr. Brad Snyder, NAFC Superintendent. “Improved mental health through access to trained therapists will help our students develop life and coping skills which is a huge component for successful living and academic success. We are thrilled Lily chose us to help lead the way with them for advances in student achievement and community prosperity. This is awesome.”
Through the Comprehensive Counseling Initiative for Indiana K-12 Students, the Endowment has made a total of $26.4 million in implementation grants and $9.1 million in planning grants to help public school corporations and charter schools across Indiana improve strategies for school counseling. During the competitive implementation grant phase of the initiative, 254 public school corporations and charter schools submitted implementation proposals totaling nearly $90 million.
“The response from school corporations and charter schools far exceeded the Endowment’s expectations,” said Sara B. Cobb, the Endowment’s vice president for education. “We believe that this response indicates a growing awareness that enhanced and expanded counseling programs are urgently needed to address the academic, college, career and social and emotional counseling needs of Indiana’s K-12 students. We were most pleased to see how the schools engaged a wide variety of community stakeholders in assessing their students’ counseling needs and developing strategies to address them.”
About Lilly Endowment Inc.
Lilly Endowment Inc. is an Indianapolis-based, private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by three members of the Lilly family through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. While those gifts remain the financial bedrock of the Endowment, the Endowment is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location. In keeping with the founders’ wishes, the Endowment supports the causes of community development, education and religion and maintains a special commitment to its hometown, Indianapolis, and home state, Indiana.