Warren Rural Electric Cooperative Corp. is offering funding for schools in the area to teach their students about electricity and energy conservation.  

Jenny Rich, WRECC’s community outreach coordinator, said the utility will award five $700 mini-grants to classrooms or schools in its service area.

The number of mini-grants is flexible, she said. “I do have wiggle room in case we get six in and all six are really good,” she said. 

WRECC has been providing the Energy Efficiency Grants since 2013, Rich said. 

The utility has long been involved in educating students in the counties it supplies power to. Before 2013, this mainly took the form of company employees visiting schools and giving presentations, she said, adding that these trips could sometimes be difficult to make time for.    

“We were trying to find ways to get students more involved in learning about energy and saving energy,” she said. “We just thought this was a great outreach tool.”

Applications for the mini-grants are due Oct. 14 and recipients will be announced no later than Oct. 21, Rich said.  

Once all the applications are received, WRECC employees decide which proposals to accept after Rich has blacked out the names of the schools and any administrators to ensure impartiality, she said.

Michelle Roberts, a first-grade teacher at Briarwood Elementary School, said via email that the school has benefited from these grants several times.

In 2014, the school used its mini-grant from WRECC to fund a visit from Jason Lindsey, a science educator who performs hands-on experiments at schools nationwide, she said. 

Roberts is currently working on a grant application in the hopes of using the funds to bring Lindsey back to Briarwood, she said. 

“He does an excellent job teaching and explaining the science concepts while doing the experiments,” she said in an email. “He keeps the students’ attention and actively involves them in these experiments. The students absolutely love it.”  

Ashley Graham, who teaches third grade at Kyrock Elementary School in Edmonson County, said the school has received an Energy Efficiency Grant from WRECC every school year since the utility started awarding these grants.  

The school has used these grants to get materials it needs to teach to state standards introduced a few years ago that call for teaching science in more hands-on ways, she said. 

“When the new science standards rolled out, we didn’t have a lot of materials so these grants gave us a chance to get some of the materials,” she said.     

These materials have included circuit kits, which allow students to build their own electrical circuits, electric kits complete with wires, batteries and light bulbs, and a hydropower kit, which lights up a light bulb when the wheel is place underwater to demonstrate hydroelectric power. 

“It’s a pretty good approach,” she said about teaching with hands-on tools. “The kids are more engaged. They enjoy doing more hands-on things.”  

— Follow Daily News reporter Jackson French on Twitter @Jackson_French or visit bgdailynews.com.