Local organizations, Newtown police net $460K in state grants

A handful of organizations and schools on the Main Line, in addition to a local police department, are slated to receive state funding for a variety of community improvement projects.

The largest grant will go to the Radnor-based Grayson School, which serves gifted children from kindergarten through 12th grade. The school will use the $125,000 for operational support, according to Democratic state Rep. Lisa Borowski, who represents Delaware County.

Additionally, three organizations will each receive $100,000:

• The Women’s Resource Center in Wayne, which will use the funds for a “Girls Lead” program that helps select middle and high school girls develop leadership capacity and essential life skills;
• The Wayne Art Center, which will use the money for roof repair and replacement; and
• Eastern University in St. David’s, which will use the funds for a Prison Education Program that serves people who are incarcerated or returning from incarceration.

The Newtown Township Police Department will receive $35,000 to help pay for community CPR training and to purchase automated external defibrillators (AEDs) and emergency trauma treatment equipment. Chris Lunn, the department’s police chief, said the AEDs will be put into patrol cars since officers are “often first on the scene of a cardiac arrest.”

Elsewhere in the Philadelphia suburbs, the boroughs of Lansdowne and East Lansdowne were recently awarded grants totaling about $1.1 million to fund infrastructure projects and pay for a new building and new cruisers for local police.