A greenhouse at Gateway High School, a G-20 Summit for students at Fox Chapel Area High School, a community extreme home makeover project in the Steel Valley School District and a high school musical at Sto-Rox High School.

Those are all projects that will be funded in the coming school year with grants from the Grable Foundation.

For the first time, the foundation this year invited Allegheny County's 42 suburban school districts to apply for grants of up to $10,000 for projects that encourage the involvement of community groups with the schools.

As a result, 18 school districts received grants ranging from $3,000 to $10,000. Most of the money will be used for arts education or science and environmental projects.

"They are all special in different ways. It reveals the great initiative on the part of the school districts and what they are able to achieve on behalf of their students," said Greg Behr, the foundation's executive director.

The Grable Foundation was founded in 1976 by Minnie Grable, widow of Erett Grable, a Pittsburgh businessman who founded Rubbermaid Inc.

At Sto-Rox, a $10,000 grant will be used to stage the first high school musical that anyone in the district can remember.

"Since I've been here and in the memory of those that I am currently working with, no one can remember a high school musical being staged," said Sto-Rox Superintendent Fran Serenka.

"A district with the finances of Sto-Rox does not have the money to put aside for musical productions. The money is put toward arts in the classroom. Now, with the students literally building a production from scratch, building the set, staging the music, we will really get a chance to see what incredible artisans and craftsmen the students are."

The district will work along with the Father Ryan Arts Center in McKees Rocks on the production.

The McKeesport Area School District also will use its $6,000 grant for arts programming.

The district will make the final renovations to an outdoor space used as a courtyard, classroom and performance space at the high school.

At Gateway, high school science teachers Dan Pompa and Joe Vigo happened to be looking for a funding source to build a greenhouse on high school property when the district learned about the availability of the Grable grants, said Cara Zanella, public relations director.

With the $10,000 grant the district received, Gateway will build a 16-by-40-foot greenhouse in the courtyard of the high school near the science wing.

The greenhouse, which will have its own hydration system, will be a hands-on classroom for students to learn about plant life and agriculture.

"We are really excited about this," Ms. Zanella said.

At Fox Chapel Area, a Grable Foundation grant of $5,182 will be used to fund the technology that will allow a Sept. 17 student G-20 Summit to be broadcast to school districts that won't be able to send students to the summit, said communications coordinator Bonnie Berzonski. The money also will help to pay for some supplies for the event.

The district plans to use the Allegheny Connect computer network created by the Allegheny Intermediate Unit to provide video conferencing with up to 17 other local school districts during the summit in addition to having students on site. The student summit is sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh.

In Steel Valley, where the district received a $10,000 grant, the money will be used for three projects.

The Steel Valley version of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," through which high school students work on home and yard improvements for disabled, elderly and poor residents of the school district, will be funded with $4,000 of the grant.

The first edition of the program took place in May, when students and some adult volunteers worked in the rain to cut grass and weeds, plant flowers and do small construction projects such as building ramps.

Another $4,000 will be used for improvements to a pond on school property between the middle school/high school complex and Franklin Primary center.

Sixth-grade students will renovate the pond, clean out litter and weeds, and build bird and butterfly gardens. The pond will be used as an interdisciplinary outdoor classroom.

School officials hope the pond will become a home for the ducklings that the fourth-grade students hatch each year. Usually, teachers find a farm to take the ducklings.

Steel Valley will spend the remaining $2,000 of its grant money on a memorial garden at the high school to honor those who have positively affected the district. The project will be undertaken by students from the Steel Valley Environmental Club, the Munhall Garden Club and the Streetlight Youth Group.

"The joining of the different age groups impressed us. That's really exciting to get older people and younger people connected," said D'Ann Swanson, Grable Foundation program officer.

Baldwin-Whitehall will use a $9,483 grant to build a pavilion in Wallace Park in Whitehall, which is the site of a six-week summer program operated for the district's significant refugee population who come from places including Myanmar, Burundi, Sudan, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia.

Moon Area will use a $10,000 grant to hold a number of workshops for middle school students, teachers and parents on issues of personal safety related to sexting, in which teens send texts sexually explicit messages or photos; cyberbullying; and academic cheating.

The program will be held in conjunction with the Moon Township police, said district spokeswoman Amanda Hartle.

"It will encourage them to have more responsible actions in texting and taking photos and they will be told what to do if you should receive something that is potentially harmful," Mrs. Hartle said.

North Hills will use a $9,000 grant to help discourage students from dropping out of school by developing a district-wide mentoring program designed to connect students with their schools.

Pine-Richland also will use a $10,000 grant for a mentoring program. The school's crew team, along with the Three Rivers Rowing Association, will develop a fitness program for at-risk and handicapped youth.

Other districts who received Grable grants are: Chartiers Valley, Cornell, Elizabeth-Forward, Quaker Valley, South Allegheny, South Fayette, Shaler Area, Upper St. Clair and West Allegheny.