Hall County’s da Vinci Academy has received a $20,000 service learning grant from the University of Alabama to jump-start the school’s student-run museum.

Cindy White, lead teacher for the academy opening at South Hall Middle School in August, said the grant will be used to purchase iPods, computers and museum supplies for the arts and science program. The money also will be used to buy microscopes, fossils and other items needed to support the fledgling school’s science mission.

Jane Newman, associate professor of education at the University of Alabama, said she believes the da Vinci Academy’s grant proposal was "very innovative" and called it the best of the 40 or so proposals submitted by Georgia schools.

Educational leaders at the University of Alabama selected Georgia as its partnering state for the federal grant to create a "teacher network" to foster and support progressive educational opportunities, White said.

Newman said the University of Alabama gained access to the grant funding through the Corporation of National and Community Service. She said the federal grant aims to get high poverty middle school students involved in learning science.

"That’s what we’re looking for is schools who are teaching students those skills and those concepts that will make us more competitive in a global society," Newman said.

Newman said the proposal expressed the academy’s plan to incorporate science and math standards into the creation and operation of the museum.

"The museum will have artifacts in it that relate to what they should be studying in sixth and seventh grade," she said.

The academy’s public museum serves as the school’s service component for the grant, White said.

She said the academy will feature an interactive Museum of Inspired Learning showcasing students’ science and art projects. South Hall Middle’s library will be transformed into a museum with polished cement floors, rotating exhibits and permanent exhibits with podcasts, she said.

"The da Vinci kids will be the ones creating the exhibits and being docents, but it will be other kids who come in and actually utilize it," White said.

About 120 sixth- and seventh-graders are enrolled at the academy for the upcoming school year, and eighth-graders will be incorporated into the school the following year.

White said the school is drawing from parent, community and local business resources to create the Museum of Inspired Learning.

"Our goal is to bond the community," she said. "We want this to be a community place and it has started with the parents."