The Ernestine Reid Teacher Innovation Grant Fund provides multiple annual grants to support creative instruction in Orange County Public Schools. The grants are awarded each spring to teachers who have proposed creative lessons that they will implement during the subsequent school year.

The Fund was established by Lou Thompson, a member of the Orange County School Board and an ex-officio member of the Orange County Education Foundation Board, in recognition of Mrs. Reid’s 38 years of service as a fifth-grade teacher at Orange Elementary School. “Your quiet but firm manner in the classroom has inspired hundreds of students to be their very best,” Mr. Thompson stated during the September 27, 2011 meeting of the Orange County School Board. “Most (of your students) have gone on to do so as adults by contributing greatly to the communities and professions they entered while possessing the outstanding character and great sense of accomplishment you instilled.”

“Stories are legion about how you instilled in your students a true and abiding belief that you truly cared about them,” Mr. Thompson added. “Your confidence in them inspired a passion for excellence that went well beyond their formative elementary school years.”

Mrs. Reid graduated in the spring of 1973 from St. Paul’s College in Lawrenceville. She began her teaching career in Orange County Public Schools in the fall of 1973. She retired from Orange County Public Schools in June of 2011. She is married to John Reid and they have two children, Kenya and John, both of whom graduated from Orange County High School and Howard University.

2021 Award Winner

First Grade – Language Arts: Carla Hord; Unionville Elementary School; Social Studies and Science with Scholastic magazine