A trust fund with roots in Harriton High School's Latin department is sending tens of thousands of dollars each year to organizations that support classical education across the mid-Atlantic region.

The Dr. Rudolph Masciantonio Trust Fund distributed $32,833.75 to each of its designated beneficiary organizations through the Philadelphia Foundation in mid-July 2026, according to a column published Sunday by Mary Brown, a former Harriton Latin teacher who now co-chairs the fund's grants committee. Brown, a Saint Joseph's University professor of Latin, first met Masciantonio in 1974 when she began teaching at Harriton in the Lower Merion School District.

Brown identified beneficiaries including the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, the Philadelphia Classical Society (based in Bryn Mawr), the Society for Classical Studies, Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania. The full list of designated organizations was not published.

Masciantonio, who died September 22, 2016, at age 75, spent three decades in the Philadelphia School District. Starting in 1963, he rose from Latin, Spanish, French, and social studies teacher to department head for foreign languages before retiring in 1994. His students called him "Mr. Mash."

He pioneered bringing Latin and Greek instruction to elementary students in Philadelphia's inner-city schools, developing poster-sized graphics and 15-minute etymology lessons for fifth- and sixth-graders, according to the Rutgers University Database of Classical Scholars. His research found that Latin study correlated with improved reading and vocabulary scores among inner-city students.

Masciantonio signed the Philadelphia Foundation Designated Fund Agreement on November 13, 2008, directing that annual distributions support "the teaching of Latin, ancient Greek, and Classical Studies" in equal amounts to designated organizations.

The CAAS established a seven-member Masciantonio Grants Committee in 2023 to channel its share of the distributions. Since then, the committee has funded high school teachers and students attending Latin and Greek conventions, undergraduate and graduate students in Paideia Institute programs and archaeological fieldwork in the Mediterranean.

Brown served as executive director of CAAS from 2009 to 2025. She wrote that Masciantonio's vision was to make Latin and Greek "widely available for all students, especially from underserved communities."

The CAAS Masciantonio Grants Committee accepts applications from current CAAS members in the mid-Atlantic region. The fall application window opens October 1, 2026, per the CAAS website.