City National Now Accepting Applications for Literacy Grants

City National Bank is now accepting applications from educators for grants to support literacy-based projects at elementary, middle and high schools in California, New York and Nevada.

The online application can be accessed by visiting www.readingisthewayup.org/literacy.asp. Any full-time teacher, librarian, administrator or school media specialist at a school in the county of New York, or in one of the 11 California or four Nevada counties in which City National has offices is eligible to apply. California counties include Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Ventura. The Nevada counties are Carson City, Clark, Douglas and Washoe.

About 150 grants totaling up to $75,000 may be awarded. Grants will provide up to $500 for the recipients to create, augment or expand literacy projects that are adjudged to be creative and engaging, and that may help improve student achievement. Awards can be used for books, videos, CDs, DVDs, computer software or hardware, or in other ways so long as the recipient shows that the project for which funds are sought will support literacy.

City National's Reading Is The Way Up(r) program will award the grants. Applications will be accepted through November 19, 2008 and awardees will be notified in March, 2009. Grant funds must be expended by December 31, 2009.

Applicants may apply individually or as part of a team. To ensure that grants are distributed to a wide range of schools, multiple grants are not likely to be awarded to applicants at the same school. However, applicants from the same school applying as a team for the same project can submit up to a maximum of three applications (for a total of $1,500).

This is the fourth year City National has awarded grants for literacy projects through the bank's Reading Is The Way Up program. In 2005, City National awarded $31,000 to Orange County educators in honor of the bank's 30th anniversary in Orange County. The program was expanded throughout Nevada last year, when the bank awarded $65,000 to more than 100 educators.

Past grants have been used for everything from literacy computer programs to art/reading projects to field trips. In one case, an elementary school used the funds to enhance literacy for struggling English language learners through the art of puppetry.

For more information about the Reading Is The Way Up Literacy Grants Program, visit http://www.readingisthewayup.org/ or send an e-mail to rwu@cnb.com.