K-12 Innovation Grants Awarded
As part of the St. Louis Community Foundation’s 2024-2028 Strategic Plan, a portion of its discretionary grant funds will go towards its Youth Connections priority area. Specifically, the Foundation will make grants that support the academic, social/emotional, and workforce readiness outcomes for youth in the region, directing funding towards early childhood education, educational innovation in K-12 public schools, and scholarship and postsecondary programs.
This past spring, the Youth Connections and the Center for Education Leadership, a program of the St. Louis Community Foundation, launched its first grant cycle of the new strategic plan, with the K–12 Innovation Grant. Combining Foundation funds with matching funds from an anonymous funder, the grant invested $250,000 in local schools to identify and support innovative practices to improve students’ social-emotional and/or academic outcomes during the 2025–2026 school year.
After a closed but competitive process, seven schools were selected and awarded a K–12 Innovation Grant, ranging from $25,000 – $50,000. Collectively, these schools serve over 2,000 students, 75% of whom are low-income.
Rather than be prescriptive about what innovation looks like, the team asked applicants to reflect on and define what innovation means in their unique school settings. Funded projects address a range of student outcomes, and include activities like installing privacy pods for students to access mental health services on campus, embedding a behavioral health therapist on staff in collaboration with a local hospital, implementing a systems thinking curriculum with students and teachers, and enhancing reading curriculum to align with the science of reading standards. The awarded projects focus on mental health support and curriculum innovation in literacy.
As one school shared, “Following the COVID-19 pandemic, our students overall have shown more behavioral and mental health challenges; Despite this, we have sustained academic growth because of the work of our Behavioral Health Therapist. Support from the St. Louis Community Foundation will help us to sustain the social-emotional and mental health gains that have been made with our students thus far and enable us to build upon that work.”
The St. Louis Community Foundation is proud to support our region’s schools as they implement innovative, research-based practices to improve student academic and social-emotional outcomes.