Harbor Freight Tools for Schools is a program of The Smidt Foundation (“TSF”), established by Harbor Freight Tools owner and founder Eric Smidt, to advance excellent skilled trades education in U.S. public high schools.

With a deep respect for the dignity of these fields and for the intelligence and creativity of people who work with their hands, Harbor Freight Tools for Schools aims to drive a greater understanding of and investment in skilled trades education, believing that access to quality skilled trades education gives high school students pathways to graduation, opportunity, good jobs and a workforce our country needs.

Harbor Freight Tools for Schools is not part of Harbor Freight Tools USA, Inc. (“HFT”), the national tool retailer. All cash awards to prize-winning teachers and schools come solely from TSF. HFT provides operational support to Harbor Freight Tools for Schools and donates tool carts and gifts cards in conjunction with the prize.

If you have any questions, please contact our team at prize@hftforschools.org.

The Harbor Freight Tools for Schools Prize for Teaching Excellence, started in 2017, recognizes outstanding skilled trades teachers and programs in public high schools in the United States.

In 2024, we will award $1.5 million in prizes overall: Five grand prize winners will each receive $100,000, with $70,000 going to the public high school skilled trades program and $30,000 going to the eligible individual skilled trades teacher. Twenty prize winners will each be awarded $50,000, with $35,000 going to the public high school skilled trades program and $15,000 going to the eligible individual skilled trades teacher. Applicants whose school, district and/or state policy prohibits receipt of the individual portion of prize earnings may still apply. Please see Receiving a Prize Award below for further information.

Finalists will be announced on Tuesday, June 11, 2024.

Winners will be announced in Fall 2024.

We define an excellent program as one led by a teacher…

• Who clearly loves the subject matter and is both highly knowledgeable and skilled;

• Who implements a curriculum matched to a relevant career pathway and future work choices, one designed to flow seamlessly into next-step options, whether to employment or college;

• Who encourages exploration and experimentation among students in a safe environment; and

• Who connects students to new relationships and experiences outside the classroom.

To see our complete Platinum Standard, please click here.

The Harbor Freight Tools for Schools Prize for Teaching Excellence is open to skilled trades teachers who are current faculty members at U.S. public high schools.

Eligible applicants are educators who teach skilled trades classes that emphasize the expert use of tools and materials to build, repair and maintain products and structures. Most applicants will come from the following broad fields of trades education in public high schools:

• Agricultural Mechanics

• Carpentry

• Construction

• Electrical

• HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning)

• Manufacturing

• Plumbing

• Transportation mechanics and repair

• Welding

We recognize that high school classes within these broad categories have a variety of names, focus areas and sub-specialties. Past winners of the prize have taught, for example, green construction, marine systems technology, diesel mechanics, advanced manufacturing and engineering. The common thread prize winners share is that their students work with their hands, using tools regularly throughout the course of study, to build, repair and maintain.

The following courses do NOT meet the eligibility requirements:

• Agricultural classes that focus solely on animal husbandry or horticulture
• Computer Science
• Cosmetology
• Design-only Architecture
• Family and Consumer Science
• Firefighting and EMT
• Health Sciences and Nursing
• Law and Public Safety
• Robotics Clubs

Each applicant and each prize recipient must be an active faculty member at a U.S. public high school, in good standing who is not subject to any threatened, pending or active disciplinary proceedings or involuntary leave of absence with their school, district or state education agencies or other authorities during the entire 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years. Applicants must be a faculty member at the same school during both such school years. Harbor Freight Tools for Schools reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to disqualify any applicant whose participation may subject the prize, its judges, Harbor Freight Tools for Schools, TSF or HFT and any of its customers to controversy, negative publicity and/or reputational harm.

Teachers at district career and technical education centers serving both high school and post-secondary students may apply if they are members of their school district’s high school faculty. If you are a teacher at a career and technical education center not on a high school faculty, please email prize@hftforschools.org.

No teacher may apply more than once for the 2024 prize. In addition, teacher teams are not eligible to apply in one application like they have been in previous years.

Past winners of the Harbor Freight Tools for Schools Prize for Teaching Excellence are ineligible to apply for the 2024 prize. Previous finalists and other applicants who were not named winners in any previous year are permitted to apply.

The following persons are also ineligible to apply for the 2024 prize:

Directors, officers and employees of TSF, HFT, and/or any of their respective affiliates; family members of directors and officers of the TSF, HFT, and/or any of their respective affiliates; immediate family members of employees of TSF, HFT, and/or any of their respective affiliates; any contributor of more than two percent of the total contributions and bequests received by TSF in any taxable year, or family member of such contributor, or, if the contributor is an entity, then any person who owns more than twenty percent of such contributing entity, or family member of such person; and senior government officials.

Harbor Freight Tools for Schools does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status, in any of its activities or operations.

To learn more about Harbor Freight Tools for Schools’ privacy policy, please click here.

Teachers should prepare applications on their own time. If you have any questions about whether you can use school time to work on your application, please consult your school/district policy.

This application process is designed to engage teachers. While you may seek advice from whomever you would like, your answers should reflect your own ideas and be written solely by you. Administrators, teacher aides, grant writers and non-skilled trades teachers are not eligible to apply or receive the individual prize award and should not participate in writing the application.

Each question has a character count maximum of 2,000 characters with spaces. The entire Round 1 application must be at least 7,000 characters total to be considered eligible to advance to Round 2.

Harbor Freight Tools for Schools may require you to provide additional information in support of a submitted application. Upon submission of your application, you agree that:

• Your application will become the property of Harbor Freight Tools for Schools, and will not be returned to you; and

• Your application materials may be disclosed, publicized or included in any publication or resource of the Harbor Freight Tools for Schools program, Harbor Freight Tools for Schools, LLC, TSF, and/or any of their respective affiliates, subsidiaries, successors and/or assigns.

To register, you must:

1. Click on the “Register” link on the homepage.
2. Please complete the information on the registration page and then click “Submit.” We highly recommend that you register with a personal email account (ex. Gmail or Yahoo) because we have learned that emails from Harbor Freight Tools for Schools may be blocked by school email security systems.
3. You will receive an email from the system which contains a link you must click on to validate your email address. For security reasons, this link expires in seven days. If you do not receive the return email from our team, please check your spam folder to see if it is there. If not, please email us at prize@hftforschools.org to ask us to validate your account.
4. After you click to validate your email address, you will be directed back to the Login page. You can then login to the system with the same validated email address and the password you created to begin the application process.
5. Please make sure to hold onto your password and sign-in email as the prize application window opens on Tuesday, March 12, 2024.

To apply, you must:

1. Complete the required information on the application page. The system has autosave that will save an application every minute while you are active. You’ll be timed out of the system after 60 minutes of inactivity.
2. If you are ready to submit, click "Save and Submit."
3. After submitting your entry, you will see a confirmation timestamp on screen and a link where you can download your entry as a PDF. You will also receive an email that your entry was submitted. Please note that once a teacher submits the application, it cannot be recalled or revised.

In administering the prize over the past six years, we’ve learned that some school, district, and/or state policies may prohibit teachers from receiving the individual portion of prize money. Before beginning your application, we ask you to check your school, district, and state policies to learn if you are eligible to receive the individual portion of the prize funds. If your school, district, or state policy prohibits you from receiving the individual portion of prize funds, you may still submit an application on behalf of your school. On the application, check the box indicating that you are applying on behalf of your school and that in the event you are named a winner, all prize money would be directed to your school’s skilled trades program, and not to you. This information will not be used as a factor in the judging process.

Upon being named winners, teachers and their schools will be asked to submit documentation required to receive a cash award from TSF.

Schools are required to direct the funds to further support the winning skilled trades program. Teachers are free to use their individual prize money as they would like.

If you are a winner and eligible to receive the individual prize money, we will send separate payments to you and your school/district.

If you are a winner and not eligible to receive the individual prize money, we will send the entire payment to the school/district.