- The Florida Department of Education has awarded a $1.6 million grant in Leon County.
- That money will help pay for a robotics program at Rickards High School and an engineering program at SAIL High School.
- Watch the video above to hear from students who say they're excited to learn even more about an emerging field.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Setting the foundation for the future.
I'm Kenya Cardonne, your neighborhood reporter in Southeast Tallahassee. I'm at Rickards High School where they're celebrating a huge grant that will pave the way for Leon County's future engineers.
"Today's a very exciting day here in Leon County," said Leon County Schools Superintendent, Rocky Hanna. Tuesday, he announced the Florida Department of Education has awarded a $1.6 million grant.
That money will benefit the students at Rickards and SAIL High Schools, specifically, with a new robotics and engineering program.
Dr. Paula Hall, who is the science department head at Rickards explained, “having it as a course now that they could take over several years, that exposure is going to be huge for this campus. This is going to open robotics in a field that's growing out there to a lot of kids that 1. Don't know about it and 2. Don't know that they're good at it yet. You know the kids will sit there and play video games but to turn around and code they don't realize that they're able to do that."
Tim and Dylan are students at Rickards.
"It's also just fun to do fun to win awards. It’s fun to do this"
They are the school's two state champs in science olympiad and just two of the many students looking forward to the new program. They tell me they're excited about the money because it will pay for, "more resources dedicated like more time that can be spent. Yeah, a research project over the summer. Make colleges like me more."
You heard him; this is more than just a new class. It sets the foundation for the future of their careers and the future of Leon County as a whole.
Dr. Hall added, "look, you just got an Amazon facility right? You've got three universities in this town. You have a U.S. Department of Agriculture here. You've got a lot of other technologies in which the robotics is going to be a part of. All of that can come down and have aspects within robotics for these kids. We had a student a few years ago for science Olympiad. That built a robotic rover to clean trash up out of the ocean. I mean, if we could do that, we could take care of a lot of our different issues from a pollution standpoint."
Rickards High Students will be able to take the new robotics class starting next school year.
