A few Snowflake Junior High School students of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) program joined the Jan. 9 Snowflake Unified School District Governing Board meeting to be acknowledged as the state winners of the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Challenge.
“I’m excited to have some students with us and Mr. (Micheal) Eilertsen is back at it again with the students and entered the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Challenge and they are state winners for the second time,” said Superintendent Hollis Merrell. To qualify for the challenge, students must be in grades 6-12 and send in a letter stating a challenge or issue their community faces and how STEM can be applied to this issue. Following that, finalists design a project that would solve that community issue using STEM. Eilertsen’s students designed a small bot that is able to go off-road and enter into small crevices with a camera.
Further discussed at the meeting was the Technology to Advance Learning Outcomes at Northland (TALON) program, which allows high school students to receive college credits for courses they take at the high school.
“As you know, we’ve been partnering with NPC (Northland Pioneer College) on a grant. The grant was called TALON and I think we’ll probably continue calling it that because that’s how it’s known, to bring college courses to our high school campuses and it’s been a great success. The grant is running out at the end of this year and we’ve been meeting with NPC to figure out solutions to that,” said Superintendent Merrell.
“If we had to pay the entire cost, that would be pretty hard to swallow based on the amount of students that we’re serving. The cost of that would be much higher than it costs to educate our own students so we would like them to pay for half of their own tuition with a safety net in case some of them can’t do it.” The motion was passed by the board unanimously.
