The Lone Tree Community School District received an Iowa Department of Education Grant for $157,500 to promote growth from students and teachers.

The grant, which is a part of the Teachers Accelerated Learning program from the state, will provide supplemental pay to teachers at Lone Tree who “significantly accelerate student learning beyond one year’s growth.”

Lone Tree Superintendent Tyler Hotz described the impact he hopes it will have on the district’s staff, “It’s going to highlight a lot of the positive things we’re already seeing with our academic growth, and I think teachers will feel appreciated that we found some sort of lever, an opportunity to reward the hard work of just the normal things we do.”

Lone Tree is in the process of developing specific growth guidelines for teachers in line with requirements from the program, but Hotz says he expects them to be based largely on testing data.