Mon Valley Education Consortium has awarded 30 Great Idea Grants in its spring round.

Grant awards total $19,581, bringing the amount of Great Idea Grant funds distributed to date to $1,156,686, according to MVEC grants coordinator Patricia E. Hoke.

Of the projects funded, 23 were teacher-level grants and six were school-level grants. Teacher-level grants average $300 and usually are implemented in a particular classroom while school-level projects average $1,500 and benefit a larger portion of the school population. Here are the South recipients:

McKeesport Area School District: Susan Williamson, White Oak Elementary School, $376 Teacher Grant for her project, Stuck On Reading. The project, to benefit 35 first-graders, uses creative learning materials such as multisensory letters, words and sentence parts to reinforce fundamental reading skills for first-graders.

South Allegheny School District: John McLaughlin, South Allegheny Elementary School, $300 Teacher Grant for his project, Orffin' Around. The project will benefit 600 pupils in grades two through six, and enhances the evolving elementary school music program by incorporating the Orff-Schulwerk approach.

Also at South Allegheny Elementary School: $1,485 School Grant for the project, Going Places Systematically, submitted by Debra J. Pliska, Brenda Godzin, Wendy Brazill, Julie Callahan Doughty, Christine Garbark, Michael Weiger, Jeff Polonoli, Bobbi Dansak, Glen Mannion, Jacqueline E. Moranelli, Carol Rothey, Marianne V. LaBarbara, Jennifer Lawton, Sally Podvasnik and Mary Long. The project, to benefit 100 pupils, adds geocaching to the woodland habitat study and nature hike in third grade. Geocaching is an activity in which people punch coordinates into a GPS system to search for hidden treasures.

West Jefferson Hills School District: Pleasant Hills Middle School, $1,110 School Grant for the project, An Evening in Paris. Submitted by Raffaelina DeSantis, Suzan Petersen, Michael Fratangelo, Jessica Lee, Kim Leopold and Lucy Fortino. The project, to benefit 600 pupils in grades six through eight, proposes to transcend the classroom experience by having pupils transform the middle school into the city of Paris to study art, music, dance, cuisine, theater and architecture of France for an evening.

West Mifflin Area School District: Donna Vranesevic, Clara Barton Elementary School, $208 Teacher Grant for her project, Kennywood: The Pride of West Mifflin. The project is an in-depth, cross-curricular study of the historic amusement park by 25 fourth- and fifth-grade gifted pupils, focusing on the engineering and physics behind the amusement park's attractions.

Thirteen of 17 eligible school districts in Allegheny, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland Counties participated, along with regional career and technology centers and vocational-technical schools.