By JOYANNA LOVE/ Senior Staff Writer

Multiple Chilton County schools will benefit from a $1,500 grant awarded to teacher Jay LeCroy.

LeCroy teaches science classes at Chilton County, Jemison and Isabella high schools as well as engineering classes at Jemison High School and LeCroy Career Technical Center.

“As I travel to all of these different schools I notice all of these deficiencies,” LeCroy said.

The funds were awarded to LeCroy earlier this month from the Chilton Education Foundation Partners Enhancing Education in Chilton County grant program.

“The grant is for …equipment for engineering that is going on all over the county,” LeCroy said.

One of the main things the grant will be used to purchase is chemicals needed for engineering. The supplies will also be available to other engineering and science teachers.

LeCroy titled his grant application “Make Science Great Again.”

Jemison High School is developing a plan to have engineering starting in kindergarten next year.

“The STEM Academy [at LeCroy Career Technical Center] is the central location where I keep all of my supplies,” LeCroy said.

Some engineering students are working on hydrogen fuel cells.

“They are learning the chemistry of the entropy of the water breaking apart … and then coming back together, then you have a battery,” LeCroy said.

The students are engineering a device to be powered by the battery.

The PEECh grant program was started in 1996. The yearly grant program is made possible through donations to the Chilton Education Foundation. Grant committee members made the decision on what to fund in January and were awarded the first few days of February. The grant program received 38 applications and funded 24 grants with at least one going to almost every school in the county.