SACO — Local educational foundation Saco STEAM has awarded nearly $10,000 for local educational projects.

SacoSTEAM was founded in 2018 to support science, technology, engineering, arts and math projects in kindergarten through eighth grades.

“We have a three-prong mission where we want to increase advocacy, increase communication, and when we can, increase some funding for programs that don’t get into the regular budget,” said foundation President Tony Palleschi at Wednesday night’s Saco School Board meeting.

Members of Steam were at the meeting to announce funding the organization had awarded in its most recent grant cycle, thanks to donations from local businesses and residents.

“We could not have raised the money and granted the grants that we did without the community’s support,” said foundation board member Tracey Collins.

SacoSTEAM received seven proposals that varied widely and in early spring, a review committee ranked the proposals based on a variety of criteria including the nature of the project, likelihood of it to succeed, number of students it impacted, the quality of student engagement and how it would inform teachers and curriculum, said foundation board member Michael Burman.

The projects that were funded in this cycle included a field trip to the Ecology School, a trip to the  Maine Learning Technology Initiative conference, a project on climate change involving studying Camp Ellis, and Engineering is Elementary – a project teaching students about solar and wind power though building solar ovens and wind mills.

The foundation is seeking a matching grant of about $3,500 to fund a music wall that would be located in Saco’s downtown next to Post Office Park. The music wall would be coded by students at Saco Middle School and visitors to the downtown with their cell phone could play music coded by students.

“It’s a very exciting project that incorporates technology, art, programming and would have a lot of public interaction,” said Burman.

Every teacher working in the Saco schools is eligible to submit a grant application to SacoSTEAM and any student, teacher, administrator or community member may join as a co-applicant. Selected projects must be approved by the principal of each involved school. Exact criteria and application instructions can be found at www.sacosteam.org.

— Staff Writer Liz Gotthelf can be reached at 780-9015 or by email at egotthelf@journaltribune.com.