$50,000 given to three local schools from the Cellcom project
Local communities voted Pacelli High School the winner of Cellcom’s Project Innovate. The school will receive $30,000 from Cellcom for the purchase of classroom technology. In October, Cellcom invited the eight public and private high schools in Marshfield, Stevens Point and Wisconsin Rapids to participate in the community voting challenge.
“Pacelli is making every effort to provide a 21st century learning environment for its students,” said Jeff Brengman, principal of Pacelli High School. “The needed funding for the use of technology is obviously ongoing. Programs like Project Innovate allow the whole community to be involved in our improvement initiatives, and we certainly had marvelous support from the entire community in this competition.”
Marshfield High School took second place in Project Innovate and will receive $15,000. In third place and receiving $5,000 was Columbus Catholic High School. Fourth place went to Chas F. Fernandez Center for Alternative Learning and the school will receive three Samsung Galaxy tablets.
The top three winning schools will use their prize money to equip classrooms with technology such as interactive white boards, an LCD projector, laptops, net books or tablets, software for games or virtual simulations, digital media tools or other resources to advance learning. Project Innovate winners were determined by the number of qualified votes cast for each school during the month-long voting period, November 1 – 30.
“As a committed advocate for youth, education and technology, Cellcom was extremely proud to introduce Project Innovate,” said Brighid Riordan, director of public affairs at Cellcom. “The major objective for this community voting program was to bring the latest in classroom technology to our local schools. Cellcom believes that providing these tools to teachers and students will inspire innovation and increase academic achievement.”
The community voting program hinged on schools mobilizing their supporters. The schools encouraged students, teachers, families and community members to vote. To be successful in Project Innovate, schools had to tell as many people as they could to vote and be creative in rallying supporters.
“Although a challenge for a small school like Pacelli, the opportunity to win $30,000 really created a community and nationwide effort. Knowing that each individual could only vote once, we knew it would take a strong campaign to win,” said Brengman. “When a school of 217 students can engage the support of its constituents to be the top vote getter in this contest, it speaks to the broad support Pacelli enjoys.”
# # # # #