Tennessee recently announced a series of grants totaling more than $15 million to help fund parks and recreation projects, including funding for those in the Chattanooga area.
In Chattanooga, SORBA will receive $200,000 to develop as many as 10 miles of natural surface, sustainable, multi-use trail and ADA compliance on a new park being developed in Hamilton County near Chattanooga, Red Bank and Signal Mountain.
East Ridge will receive $500,000 for Pioneer Frontier for playground replacement, splash pad and ADA compliance.
Signal Mountain will receive $400,000 for renovations to Marion Field and Driver Field, including surfacing, fencing, stormwater improvements, new bleachers adjacent to Driver Field and ADA compliance.
Soddy Daisy will receive $165,000 for Northend Park improvements to remove current playground, install new playground equipment and surface that meets all current standards and ADA compliance.
“Easy access to parks, trails, walking paths and other recreational facilities can make a good community a great community,” Gov. Bill Haslam says. “These grants provide the resources needed to help make Tennessee an even more desirable place to live, work and raise a family.”
Skuid launches app templates
Chattanooga-based Skuid, a cloud application platform, has released Skuid Application Templates.
The templates make designing, developing and deploying personalized applications faster and easier, without writing code.
With the templates, businesses can start with a variety of optimized, best-practice app templates to create sophisticated, consumer-grade apps that drive adoption and engagement across all business functions.
Skuid’s new product offers ready-made strategic applications, including sales-related apps such as CPQ, sales force automation, products and pricing portals, inside sales, partner/customer portals and opportunity management; HCM-related apps such as recruitment and applicant tracking, HR management, online learning, employee portals and surveys; in addition to mobile apps for sales, field service and more.
“We will use Skuid App Templates as a jumping off point to quickly deploy and iterate as we build various applications for our customers,” says David Rosenbaum, managing partner at Rosetree Solutions.
“By using Skuid’s best practice templates, we anticipate accelerating our go-to-market by up to 90 percent versus traditional coding methods with a blank canvas.”
Innovation Award for teachers announced
The Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce and Chattanooga 2.0 are encouraging region educators to apply for a new Innovation Award recognizing creativity and innovation in Hamilton County classrooms.
The two organizations will present the 2018 Education Innovator Award as part of the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce’s Spirit of Innovation Awards on Oct. 24.
This is the first year for the award, created to honor and celebrate local innovation in education.
“Our teachers are developing the next generation of innovators and creative thinkers,’’ says Abby Garrison, executive director for Causeway and volunteer leader of Chattanooga 2.0’s Innovation Action Team, which took a leadership role in creating the award.
The application deadline is Sept. 14. Educators can apply on Chattanooga 2.0’s website chatt2.org/education-innovator-award.
Hamilton students show TVAAS progress
The Hamilton County Schools system announces student academic growth showed significant improvement according to the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System for 2018.
The overall composite score for student academic growth in Hamilton County Schools improved to Level 3 – meeting growth expectations – from Level 1 last year. The state department reports TVAAS results for districts and schools using a range from Level 1 to Level 5.
The 2018 results are the first time since 2013 that the district’s overall TVAAS composite across all subjects showed students meeting growth expectations.
Literacy performance remained robust in growth at Level 5, with the strongest results in elementary and middle school. Social studies also showed significant growth in elementary and middle school moving from Level 1 to Level 4. Notably, the gains in social studies were attained with a new, more rigorous assessment that students took for the first time this year.
Numeracy continues to be a challenge for the district across all grade levels coming in at Level 1 on TVAAS for both 2017 and 2018.
High school results generally did not show students meeting growth expectations and verifies the move to make learning more relevant with the addition of Future Ready Institutes this year.
Unum rates highly for disability equality
Chattanooga’s Unum has been named one of the 2018 Disability Equality Index “Best Places to Work” by the United States Business Leadership Network.
The agency is now known as Disability: IN, and the American Association of People with Disabilities.
The benchmark offers an objective measure of disability inclusion practices and procedures.
Companies are rated on several key performance indicators including culture, leadership, accessibility, employment, community engagement, support services and supplier diversity.