The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently awarded Caro Community Schools a $848,462 grant to go towards distance learning opportunities for their students.
The grant comes from the Distance Learning and Telemedicine grant program, a competitive nationwide grant dedicated to bringing better telecommunications technology to rural areas.
Caro Community School's funds are set to go towards equipping the technology needed to allow their students to be dual enrolled in select community colleges from home. A few of the choices include Mid-Michigan Community College and the Tuscola Technology Center.
The grant will also allow Caro to let their students participate in activities such as virtual field trips and entrepreneurship workshops.
Michigan's acting USDA director Valarie Handy told WCMU this grant is going to allow students to be able to choose the classes they want to participate in, rather than being shoehorned into taking classes as a cohort.
"Those dual enrolled students take specific courses that they all physically go to on the same days at the same times," Handy said. "This Distance Learning and Telemedicine grant is going to open up the courses that those students can select from and help them build the future they want to live."
Caro is one of two Michigan choices for this round of grants, picked out of applicants from across the country. The other grantee were the McKenzie Memorial Hospital in Sanilac County, who will use their grant to equip the county with telemedicine equipment to broaden the level of care available in the area.
"Our mission is to support the economy and the quality of life in rural places," Handy said. "Access to medical professionals, access to education, you know, anything that anyone in an urbanized city would have access to. It's essential to making sure that rural people have the quality of life they deserve."
Caro Community Schools will be able to help nearly 1,500 students through the use of the grant.
