At Cooleemee Elementary School, four students are tucked into a corner room of the media center, headphones to their heads as they work with an interactive educational program called Waterford.
The program helps students improve in reading, mathematics and science. But only four students at a time can use the program in about 20-minute increments, said Carol Cozart, the school's principal.
"That leaves a lot of students not being able to access it," she said as she stood in the room, occasionally stopping to encourage one of the children.
School officials want to change that, with the help of a $180,185 grant from the Mebane Charitable Foundation, which was started by the late philanthropist G. Allen Mebane.
The grant will pay for an expansion of the lab from four computer stations to 16. The grant will also help expand another lab that uses the educational program called SuccessMaker from 29 to 50 computer stations.
"The thought of having much improvement when we're expanding these resources is just exciting," Cozart said.
Cooleemee was one of the first elementary schools in 2003 to have a Waterford lab. And it was the first elementary school in Davie to get a SuccessMaker lab in the 2007-08 school year.
Both programs are designed to help students improve in certain subject areas and are set up to track individual students' progress. The programs produce diagnostic reports that show areas in which a particular student is improving and the areas in which the student still needs help, Cozart said.
Cooleemee has 516 students and is a Title I school, receiving extra federal money because it has a large number of poor students. More than 70 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced-priced lunches.
"Cooleemee is one of our schools that really does need extra help with its students," said Linda Bost, the director of special projects for Davie County Schools.
As a Title I school, Cooleemee is under pressure to meet Adequate Yearly Progress, a requirement under the No Child Left Behind. AYP is a measurement of how groups of students are doing in math and reading. If just one student group at a school does not meet a certain goal, then the school doesn't meet AYP. Title I schools that don't meet AYP after a number of years could face sanctions.
Cozart said she is concerned about AYP but is even more concerned with making sure that every student is learning.
The Mebane Charitable Foundation is providing the grant over three years, said Larry Colbourne, the executive director of the foundation. The foundation will provide about $38,000 in the first year and about $71,000 in each of the next two years.
The grant will pay for a license that allows the school to expand its use of the software throughout the entire school. The license will be paid for over three years, said Linda Dorsett, the K-5 curriculum director and Title I coordinator for Davie County Schools.
The grant also pays for new computers and for a summer program that helps students improve their academic performance, Cozart said.
Davie County Schools will pay about $38,000 in matching money in the first year, said Butch Rooney, the director of technology for the school system.
SuccessMaker and Waterford aren't a substitute for good teaching, but they supplement it, Cozart said.
And the diagnostic reports help teachers in the classroom better help their students improve, she added.
"Putting those things together is what makes this work," she said.
■ Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com.
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