A grant awarded to the Hempfield Area School District will help build its Science Technology Engineering and Math program in the middle schools.
The district was awarded $35,000 as part of Gov. Tom Wolf’s PASmart grants. The money will be used to build the robotics program at Harrold, Wendover and West Hempfield middle schools, Assistant Superintendent Mark Gross said.
Partnering with Robomatter Incorporated, a Pittsburgh-based technology and engineering curriculum solutions provider, the program will teach students to program and build robots, with a focus on computer science.
Robomatter brings STEM programs to students through computer science and robotics.
Officials at Hempfield started the STEM program at the high school in 2016, Gross said, giving students different class options and job-shadowing opportunities.
“A lot of schools were talking about building a school or sending students to a STEM school,” Gross said. “We challenged ourselves and said, ‘Why does it take going outside? Why can’t we do something internally?’ So we actually built it from the ground up.”
With seven in 10 new jobs in the state requiring workers to use a computer and about 300,000 STEM jobs becoming available over the next 10 years, PASmart grants were awarded to 765 schools to help districts expand computer science classes and teacher training, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education website.
Some schools received advancing grants, up to $500,000 each, which are aimed at supporting schools that have 50 or more students participating in STEM programs.
