Foundation grant helps Bethel students experience the arts

Bethel Local Schools invested over $7,000 of grant funding from the Tipp City Foundation in 2025 toward student experiences in the arts.

On November 14, 2025, four teeming Bethel Local School buses steered in front of downtown Dayton’s Victoria Theater and unloaded 155 first graders and 15 chaperones onto the sidewalk. 

Bethel first-grade teacher and spearhead of the field trip, Cydni Parrish, secured a grant from the Tipp City Foundation for the 2025-2026 first-grade class to attend Victoria Theater’s Dayton Live Discovery Series event, “Singing Zoologist.”

Parrish found a way to weave an academic lesson and an arts experience together. Students learned about animal vocabulary in the classroom through a language arts module named “Creature Features,” then watched as a certified zoologist sang, danced, and performed the vocabulary on stage. 

“To read something in a book and see it in real life is a whole different moment,” Parrish said. 

A student’s connection between an academic lesson and a real life experience is what Parrish calls an “aha” moment. After 23 years of teaching, it’s what she loves the most about her job. 

The students will attend the Dayton Live Discovery Series once more this school year for another timely show connecting the language arts module “Cinderella Around the World” to Victoria Theater’s “Fractured Fairy Tales” performance this February. 

Another grant awarded to Bethel will send high school students further outside of Bethel and to Walt Disney World, where they’ll make the leap from audience members to performers. 

From December 26 through the 31st, 40 Bethel High School choir students will travel by bus from Ohio to Florida to perform in Disney Springs. 

Bethel Choir teacher Lara Wolford said at one time, overnight trips to travel and perform were an expectation in the Bethel music program. Since 2016, however, they’ve become less common, so she’s made it her goal to reinstate the trips permanently. 2023 was the first year she was successful. 

Wolford said the trips are an opportunity for students to meet people from around the world, make lasting memories, and apply their choir studies in a more practical way. “It takes what we do in the choir room to a new level,” Wolford said. But the trips come at a price. 

Transportation, two meals a day, a hotel, and admission to four parks would cost each choir student around $1,449. “I don’t want to have a situation where I have a kid who desperately wants to go and money is what’s keeping them from going,” Wolford said. 

The awarded grant of $3,000 from the Tipp City Foundation, amongst other fundraising and awarded donations, alleviates some of the cost, shaving off about $250 for students. 

Bethel’s marching band has also invested in their program.

Bethel Music Boosters, which applied to the grant on behalf of the marching band, is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit that supports the school’s music program by offering time and funding. Treasurer Andrea Williams said new band director Megan Rust is on a mission to win more competitions by improving the band’s look and sound. 

During a monthly meeting, Rust presented the band’s need for a new xylophone. Williams described from the meeting that the xylophone was immobile, the keys on the instrument had changed color and warped, and the mallets had fallen apart. 

Williams applied for a grant through the Tipp City Foundation and was awarded about $2,500 for a new xylophone from Kincaid’s Is Music in Springfield. While Bethel Music Boosters can provide funds where necessary, Williams said that outside funds “give the school more money to be smart.”

“It’s interesting how nonprofits and grants work together,” Williams said. “It allows us to do even more…we’re just so incredibly grateful for it.”

Williams’ son Liam, a freshman on the basketball team, had a game on the same night that the xylophone was delivered, so Williams headed to the band room. There, she found four smiling students already gathered around the new instrument, excited and ready to play her a song with a fresh sound on the shiny new keys. 

“The arts are hurting, and every little bit helps,” Williams said.