School receives grant

The Sisters Elementary School has been awarded a grant by Portland State University to improve the talented and gifted program.

According to principal Tim Comfort, 22 schools applied for the grants and nine schools were accepted into the program.

The grant will send Comfort, teachers Tina Fiedler (third grade), Diane Jacobsen (fourth grade) and Jill Misener (third and fourth grade) and counselor Amy Stranieri to Portland State for an all-day seminar.

"There we will look at what we are now doing and develop an action plan on how we can improve our program for talented and gifted students," Comfort said.

Talented and gifted students are those who place in the 97th percentile or better in a standardized test, Comfort said.

Programs to improve their learning include personal goal setting, independent projects and a self-paced program that emphasizes reasoning and problem solving.

Portland State will send one or more team members to Sisters Elementary School five times next school year "to let us know how we are doing and how to improve," Comfort said.