Los Angeles, Calif., July 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas), the primary provider of natural gas to Central and Southern California, recently announced a $10,000 grant to MIND Research Institute to help sustain COVID-19 relief efforts in the Los Angeles area and beyond. The grant supports the estimated 200,000 students in SoCalGas’ service regions who utilized ST Math prior to the pandemic’s related school closures, and an additional 500,000 students who have joined the program since.
According to a report published in April 2020 by NWEA, student progress in math is at greatest potential for risk due to COVID-19 related school closures, and students could return to school in the fall “with less than 50% of the learning gains and in some grades, nearly a full year behind what we would observe in normal conditions.” With support from SoCalGas, ST Math can help reverse that trajectory by providing students with access to meaningful math learning.
ST Math is a PreK-8 visual instructional program that leverages the brain's innate spatial-temporal reasoning ability to solve mathematical problems. ST Math’s unique, patented approach provides students with equitable access to learning through challenging puzzles, non-routine problem solving, and informative feedback.
“SoCalGas is pleased to be able to support MIND Research Institute with this $10,000 grant,” said Sarita Figueroa, Community Relations Manager at SoCalGas. “We recognize the importance of supporting our community organizations like MIND who are helping students to learn and achieve success both inside and outside of the classroom.”
MIND offered no-cost access to ST Math to schools, districts, and families from March 14 through June 30, 2020 — welcoming 287,955 new students in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) alone. Over 1,200 LAUSD teachers joined MIND-hosted webinars to support remote implementation. In total, over 340,500 new students in LA County have received free access, joining over 1.8 million new ST Math students in more than 5,600 schools.
“As a nonprofit social impact organization, MIND is here to support students’ entire learning ecosystem, including learning from home,” said MIND’s CEO Brett Woudenberg. “Right now, parents and teachers need access to programs that are effective, engaging, and easy to facilitate. We are grateful to SoCalGas for aiding us in offering no-cost access to ST Math during school closures, and the resources necessary for successful implementation. Together, we can contribute toward effective, continued education and mitigate potential learning gaps.”
About MIND Research Institute
MIND Research Institute is a neuroscience and education social impact organization dedicated to ensuring that all students are mathematically equipped to solve the world’s most challenging problems. MIND is the creator of ST Math®, a PreK-8 visual instructional program that leverages the brain's innate spatial-temporal reasoning ability to solve mathematical problems. Its unique, patented approach provides students with equitable access to learning through challenging puzzles, non-routine problem solving, and informative feedback. MIND has also developed programs under MathMINDs to provide students, teachers and families dynamic ways to actively engage with math, and to close the experience gap for all learners. MathMINDs includes Family Nights, the national K-12 Game-a-thon and MathMINDs Games. For more information, visit mindresearch.org.
About SoCalGas
Headquartered in Los Angeles, SoCalGas® is the largest natural gas distribution utility in the United States. SoCalGas delivers affordable, reliable, clean and increasingly renewable natural gas service to 21.8 million customers across 24,000 square miles of Central and Southern California, where more than 90 percent of residents use natural gas for heating, hot water, cooking, drying clothes or other uses. Natural gas delivered through the company's pipelines also plays a key role in providing electricity to Californians— about 45 percent of electric power generated in the state comes from gas-fired power plants.
SoCalGas' vision is to be the cleanest natural gas utility in North America, delivering affordable and increasingly renewable energy to its customers. In support of that vision, SoCalGas is committed to replacing 20 percent of its traditional natural gas supply with renewable natural gas (RNG) by 2030. Renewable natural gas is made from waste created by dairy farms, landfills and wastewater treatment plants. SoCalGas is also committed to investing in its natural gas system infrastructure while keeping bills affordable for our customers. From 2014 through 2018, the company invested nearly $6.5 billion to upgrade and modernize its natural gas system to enhance safety and reliability. SoCalGas is a subsidiary of Sempra Energy (NYSE: SRE), an energy services holding company based in San Diego. For more information visit socalgas.com/newsroom or connect with SoCalGas on Twitter (@SoCalGas), Instagram (@SoCalGas) and Facebook.
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