District and community leaders announced the $1.25 million grant from the National Education Association.

Columbus is one of three districts in the nation to win the money.

Superintendent Gene Harris says the grant will be used to reverse student achievement gaps at Linden McKinley and Briggs high schools and eleven other middle and elementary schools that show high poverty rates and lagging student achievement.

“One of the elements of it is it will actually allow our teachers to do home visits and really help parents understand the critical role that they play in learning for their children,” Harris says.

Harris says the grant money will also hasten a move toward what educators call “project-based” learning. Harris says students at the Linden STEM academy at Cleveland and Westerville Road provided an example as she arrived for the news conference announcing the grant.

“My guys were telling me about their math and their science learning and the robots that they are getting ready to build and the different math competitions that they’re involved in,” Harris says. “They’re very excited about that.”

Linden STEM Academy principal Janet Hinds says some of the new money will also be spent on research to determine how children best learn; whether through auditory, visual, or tactile means. She says that boosting student achievement in the classroom is critical to their personal success after high school graduation.

“We also know where the jobs are going to be for the future.” Hinds says. “And we know that they’re going to be in science; we know that they will be in technology. Well look at our kids. They are just so geared to texting and using the computer and tweeting and twittering and all these other kinds of things and that’s the wave of the future. So we have to make sure that our students can function in that new global society.”

A consulting firm will evaluate the district’s use of the grant money.

Republican incumbent Mike DeWine says he will vote NO on at least one of the three embryonic stem cell bills. The main bill, passed by the U.S. House last year, would call for the federal government to give funding for stem cell research involving embryos created in fertility clinics. U.S. Senator Mike DeWine.

“I am Pro-Life. So I do not believe that we should, you know, create embryos to destroy them. Nor do I believe that embryos should be destroyed. And so I will vote accordingly,” DeWine said.

U.S. Congressman Sherrod Brown, running against DeWine, said politics should not be involved in scientific research like stem cells.

“This is an issue that I join with Nancy Reagan, I join with the medical communities, medical researchers all over the country in pursuing real science, real medical research that can help, literally, millions of Americans,” Brown said.

Ohio’s Senate race is considered to be one to watch. Herb Asher is a retired political science professor at the Ohio State University. Asher said polls suggest more Americans are in favor of stem cell research than are opposed to it. He said with DeWine and Brown at opposing views about stem cell funding, this week’s vote could benefit Brown’s campaign.

“If the Senator votes as you are telling me, I would expect that his opponent will try to use the vote as a way of gaining support among the middle ground in Ohio,” Asher said.

A second bill would ban facilities from accepting tissue from an embryo implanted or developed in a woman or animal for research And the third would promote embryo-like stem cell development without creating or harming embryos. Two positions that DeWine supports.

“My vote will be consistent with my Pro-Life beliefs. But also consistent with my belief that we should have, clearly, medical research. I’ve supported medical research and in other areas of stem cell research, adult stem cells,” DeWine said.

While Brown is in favor of federal funding for stem cell research he says it must be done within ethical means.

“I think that we should do whatever we can, as I’ve voted in the past, whatever we can, to help within ethical bounds to help with medical research. In no way is this cloning anything like that, that the political profiteers like to make this as,” Brown said.

The Ohio U.S. Senate race is expected to be a tight one, and stem cell research could prove to be a pivotal issue for either candidate.

Kerry charged the president has “an extreme political agenda that slows instead of advances science.” He says Bush “is so beholden to far-right ideologues that he has blocked the true promise of stem cell research.”

Kerry says that has robbed people of the hope that science will cure or at least ease their illnesses.

In his speech, Kerry reiterated his support for embryonic stem cell research. And that support was echoed by Christopher Reeve’s widow.

Dana Reeve spoke of the hope that embryonic stem cell research had given her husband that he would once again walk.

She said most Americans believe that stem cell research can lead to such advances, and that Kerry does as well.