St. Louis, MO. – The Innovative Technology Education Fund (ITEF) awarded $298,612 in Innovator Grants to six area schools. These competitive grants allow schools in our region to implement innovative educational technology and creative solutions for k-12 students.
“As ITEF celebrates 40 years of serving the St. Louis community, we are especially proud to award this year’s Innovator Grants to schools that reflect the rich diversity of our metro region. Each project offers creative approaches to addressing meaningful, community-specific topics, with the potential to inspire others. We look forward to learning alongside our school partners as their ideas come to life,” said ITEF CEO, Michele Mosley.
The 2026 Innovator Grant recipients are:
Fort Zumwalt School District, $63,880
To provide personalized one-to-one language support across speaking, writing, and listening domains through the purchase of 144 Chromebooks for emergent ELL students and 10 Google Gemini Pro licenses for educators. Grant-funded equipment will help remove linguistic barriers to improve English language acquisition, enhance student engagement, develop digital fluency, and create a more equitable learning environment for ELL students in the Fort Zumwalt School District, who collectively represent over 36 languages.
KIPP St. Louis, $45,000
To provide “TeachFX” licenses and support for three KIPP Schools. Teach FX captures classroom audio and provides real-time coaching feedback to teachers by measuring student-to-teacher talk ratio, question types, wait time, and student participation and discourse patterns. TeachFX helps students become active partners in their instructional improvement and sets instructional goals for students and teachers to monitor progress through six high level instructional practices.
Nerinx Hall High School, $54,448
To create an immersive 360° astronomy learning experience through a student-led Planetarium Ambassadors program. The purchase of a mobile planetarium enhances STEM education, STEM identity, and leadership through targeted outreach as students organize planetarium visits to a variety of community schools, including low-resource schools. By bringing the experience directly to schools, the mobile planetarium reduces barriers to science field experiences, including transportation, light pollution, and weather challenges.
Sister Thea Bowman Catholic School, $70,000
To provide comprehensive resources to enhance STEM education for sustainable, year-round learning, including summer programming, supporting hands-on learning and partnerships with community organizations. Grant funding includes robotics kits and carts for the Bowbot Robotics Team, educator laptops, support for summer STEM enrichment programming, science resources, and field trip transportation.
The Biome School, $44,296
To provide 14 Mirror Talk devices to transform instructional coaching, address teacher shortage, promote equity, and enhance instructional practice and student voice. Mirror Talk introduces a hybrid human-technology model to reduce teacher coaching feedback time by 85% and improve student engagement and learning outcomes.
The Fulton School, $20,988
To support a student-created project that integrates virtual reality and physical timelines with robotics and AI technology to enhance individual and class lessons. Students will design a website with a virtual reality timeline, build robots, and create 3D-printed models to transform a school hallway into an interactive learning space.
About the organization
The Innovative Technology Education Fund (ITEF) is a St. Louis-based, charitable, nonprofit, private 501 (c)(3) foundation that supports innovation in education by funding advanced technology in the classrooms of public, private, parochial, and charter schools in the greater St. Louis area. In addition, we provide opportunities for educators to continue to grow and learn in their field. Our work is supported through the FCC license we hold for four Educational Broadband channels in St. Louis, Missouri.
For more information, contact us at ITEF@innovteched.com
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