Sharpsville Area School District has received a $45,280 state grant to help elementary students achieve state standards in reading, writing and mathematics.

The Students Achieving Standards Grant is designed primarily to buy software correlated with academic standards, said Assistant Superintendent Dr. Douglas Hazlett.

The district will provide a $9,056 match for the state Department of Education grant, Hazlett said.

The grant will help the district target 91 students in third grade, 94 students in fourth grade and 91 students in fifth grade using computer software from NCSLearn, Pittsburgh.

The software electronically aligns its curriculum with state standards and allows teachers to keep track of student progress, the application said.

Hazlett said the district will use the money to build on NCSLearn software programs established with state Read to Succeed grant money for kindergarten through third grades. The district is in the third year of the four-year Read to Succeed grant and received $46,312 this year.

Third-graders were targeted with the Read to Succeed grant, but the Students Achieving Standards grant enables the district to expand the software programs.

"This will allow us to expand to all of third, fourth and fifth grade, which is pretty significant," Hazlett said.

The bulk of the money will go to buying the software, and about $6,000 will be used for professional development so the teachers know how to use it, Hazlett said.

Hazlett and district technology coordinator Scott Kinney co-chaired the grant-writing team.