By Naomi Tsuang
Online News Editor
A committee has allotted a total of $33,000 toward various grants under the Clinton Social Inclusion Grant, and Mira Costa students and staff members made up five of the winners.
Costa College and Career Center counselors Caryn Ramirez, Elizabeth Rieken, Shalyn Tharayil; Band teacher Joel Carlson; Science Department Chair Jessica Bledsoe; senior Jennifer Marer and sophomore Nisha Chatwani were the five winners from Costa. Other grant winners include Grandview Elementary School fifth grader Augusta Halle; Grandview Principal Nancy Doyle; Manhattan Beach Middle School psychologists Marjorie Questin and Dr. Carolyn Ford; and two sets of MBUSD parents, Lindsey Fox and Gita O’Neil and Laura Kainsinger and Ava Cato-Werhane.
“We loved every single applicant, whether they won or not,” Social Inclusion Grant Committee Chair Marla Zaslansky said. “For the ones [who] didn’t win, we tried to research and find alternatives for them because each one was very meaningful.”
The Manhattan Beach Clinton family offered the grant in order to distribute the money raised after an unknown individual(s) fire bombed their home in February 2015. After an investigation, officials alleged that it was a hate crime with racial ties, Grant co-founder and donor Malissia Clinton said. Within days of the crime, the community raised thousands of dollars to provide a reward for anyone able to provide information that would help identify the suspect(s). Since no one claimed the reward, the Clinton family split up the money in order to create a number of grants aimed at racial equality and inclusion, Clinton family member senior Michai Clinton said.
“It’s almost been two years since the event happened, so the fact that this grant is finally going to start happening and will make an impact on MBUSD is really exciting,” Michai Clinton said.
Link: View all of the Clinton grant winners and their projects
To apply for the grant, applicants submitted proposals for projects they wanted to initiate. Each project also was required to touch on race, but themes in the projects included anti-bullying and kindness.
To aid applicant winners with their projects, the Clinton family granted a total of $5,000 to the student winners; $15,000 to the teacher winners; and $8,000 to district-level programming for parent and teacher education. All recipients must pursue their initiatives with the grants by July 2017.
“The Clinton family took a situation that set us way back as a community, and they flipped the field with this [grant],” Costa Principal Dr. Ben Dale said. “It put into action what the Clinton family feels is most needed in our community. I’m glad to see people responded and applied.”
Link: View MBEF’s additional grants to schools
Chatwani, one of the winners, plans to create a new club in January called Club Harmony, an inclusion club that will host speakers from various racial and religious backgrounds as well as gender and sexual identities to increase empathy, Chatwani said. Marer’s proposal, which she chose to call “Our Beauty,” will be a one-day event in either February or March at Costa where all Costa departments and community members will be able to view media such as videos and artwork that depict Costa artists’ varying interpretations on diversity.
“I’m happy that [the committee] thought my idea was worth something in the first place,” Marer said. “I really hope that the average person realizes that [race] is something that should be talked about.”
Bledsoe’s project is based on forging human connections and exploring ancestry using student DNA, and Carlson created an initiative called “Jazz: Musical Diversity at it’s Best, from Swing to Latin Jazz, Blues to Funk Rock and more.” Tharayil, Ramirez and Rieken created the Freshman Summer Bridge Program, a one-week program for freshmen that includes workshops, presentations, a campus tour and an overview of college admissions and resources at Costa.
“The Summer Bridge program will benefit a lot of students,” Ramirez said. “We want students to feel comfortable at Costa and be fully aware of all the support and resources on campus.”
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