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Backing the East Bay teachers who make STEAM happen

November 6, 2026 · Piedmont Makers

Piedmont Makers is awarding $30,000 in Teacher Grants to PUSD educators and partnering with DonorsChoose to fund STEAM classroom projects from teachers across the East Bay.

A Piedmont High student solders the wiring inside a marbled purple electric guitar body, with soldering irons and a printed wiring diagram on the workbench.
Wiring a guitar in Piedmont High's guitar engineering class. Photo courtesy of Piedmont Unified School District.

Kids learn to build, invent, and keep going after the first try fails because a teacher made room for it. All across the East Bay, educators are setting up circuits, stocking maker spaces, running labs, and finding new ways to get students excited about science, technology, engineering, art, and math. Many of them are doing it on a tight budget, and plenty are paying for supplies themselves.

We want to help. This year Piedmont Makers is supporting STEAM teachers in two ways: Teacher Grants for Piedmont Unified educators, and a new partnership with DonorsChoose for teachers across the rest of the East Bay.

Teacher Grants for PUSD educators

Piedmont Makers is awarding $30,000 in STEAM Teacher Grants for the 2026-27 school year. Any PUSD teacher or staff member can apply for funding for a project in their classroom.

  • Application: a short Google Form that takes most people under 10 minutes.
  • Deadline: Monday, November 9, 2026.
  • Awards: we review applications and announce grants in early December. Funds are usually disbursed by January, in time for the spring semester.
  • School Maker Faire: every teacher who receives a grant is invited to the School Maker Faire in the spring, and we encourage teachers and their students to present their projects there.

We read STEAM broadly. Past grants have paid for curriculum development, classroom supplies, and professional development, from LED circuit kits at Beach Elementary to physics equipment at Piedmont High. We lean toward durable projects that last more than one year and reach many students. Last year we funded 20 of the 27 applications we received, and you can browse everything we funded to get ideas.

Partnering with DonorsChoose across the East Bay

Our Teacher Grants program is for PUSD, but STEAM teaching happens in every East Bay school, and we’d like to back it wherever it is.

So we’re partnering with DonorsChoose, the nonprofit crowdfunding site where teachers post classroom projects and the community funds them. If you teach outside Piedmont and have a STEAM project on DonorsChoose, send the link to grants@piedmontmakers.org. We’ll fund as much of it as we can.

Thank you, teachers

To every educator who has stayed late to get a lesson working, turned a closet into a maker space, or let a classroom get a little messy in the name of discovery: thank you. You are the reason so many East Bay kids think of themselves as creators, problem solvers, and innovators, and we’re glad to do what we can to help in your classroom.

Questions? Email grants@piedmontmakers.org.