Wichita ? Clad in waders and standing on the squishy bank of a river, Antwain Smith lifted a slider turtle out of a trap.

“This one isn’t as old, but it’s bigger,” Smith, a sophomore at Wichita North High School, said of how this turtle compared to an older slider turtle measured earlier.

“It’s definitely a female,” Smith said after looking at the turtle’s feet and not seeing long, sharp claws.

His teacher, Bill Welch, built on his student’s observations. “The female in this species is bigger — they can be twice as big,” he said.

This outdoor educational moment was made possible by the Koch Foundation.

Welch won a $1,500 mini-grant from the foundation earlier this school year, which allowed him to buy equipment to expand his field ecology classes’ turtle studies to the Great Plains Nature Center.

The Koch Foundation mini-grant is just one example of mini-grants and larger grants Wichita schools receive that are funded by private corporations or individuals.

More than $86,000 in Education Edge grants were announced by the district in May. Although corporate donations can be large sums of money, they must be used for specific purposes — not to plug holes in the budget, said Russell Miller, director of grants for the Wichita district.

“The budget crisis we’re in will cause us to look more deeply for the opportunity for grants,” he said.

The Koch Foundation mini-grants tend to focus on partnerships with certain community organizations, such as the nature center, Miller said.

Since 1995, Koch family foundations and companies have contributed $1 million to Wichita schools, Koch spokeswoman Melissa Cohlmia said. This includes $50,000 to the Education Edge fund and $260,000 in-kind from donating land where the district built Stucky Middle School, she said.

The Education Edge mini-grants are for individual classroom projects, along with athletic and fine-arts improvements.

The fund was started in 2003 by district supporters and consists of donations from private businesses and individuals. Since then, $1.6 million has been given to the fund and $627,000 in grants awarded. He said the Education Edge steering committee is gearing up for some changes in the program, including being more visible in the community.

The recession hasn’t changed corporate giving substantially, Miller said. In fall 2008, Spirit AeroSystems — affected by the downturn in the aviation industry — donated $200,000 over four years to sponsor the AVID programs at Southeast High School and Coleman Middle School.

Most of the donations go to paying tutors and materials for the program. The district pays teacher salaries and training.