Newport News Public Schools awarded $2 million DoDEA grant for STEM education
The Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) has awarded a $2 million grant to Newport News Public Schools (NNPS) for STEM education.
The funding, which coordinates PK-12 educational programs on behalf of the
U.S. Department of Defense, is part of the Mission STEM: Pioneering Pathways in Robotics and Space Exploration initiative. The grant will provide STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) learning opportunities for students in 12 NNPS schools, serving grade levels from elementary through high school.
The five-year grant will increase STEM education through after-school robotics programs and space camps, including an overnight summer space camp for high school students at Wallops Island. Students will have the opportunity to work with STEM professionals and explore future career paths in the fields of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence.
NNPS will establish a new partnership with the Virginia Space Flight Academy to bring new and innovative STEM programs to students.
NNPS preschoolers read with Mayor’s Book Club
Listening to stories being read and collecting books starts early in NNPS as preschool students participate in the Mayor’s Book Club.
Each month, students will receive the featured book, listen to a guest adult read the story and take home information about book-related learning activities families can do together. A partnership between NNPS, the City of Newport News and the Newport News Public Library supports the Mayor’s Book Club, which returned with guest readers back in classrooms after a year as the Preschool Book Club in 2023-24.
Local Kiwanis clubs raise money for the program and coordinate their members and other community volunteers to read stories to students in their classrooms each month. Copies of books and audio recordings of them being read are available to guest readers so they can prepare in advance of reading in classrooms.
NNPS receives CPR kits sponsored by NN Shipbuilding on World Restart a Heart Day
NNPS was presented with 13 CPR In Schools training kits, a gift sponsored by Huntington Ingalls Industries and its Newport News Shipbuilding division through the American Heart Association, Hampton Roads.
Officials from each of the groups involved, along with students from the Governor’s Health Sciences Academy at Warwick High School, gathered for a kits presentation and demonstration of hands-only CPR techniques in recognition of World Restart a Heart Day on October 16 in the NNPS Administration Building Auditorium.
Teaching students preventative and preparedness measures for cardiovascular events are mission critical to the AHA, said MeShall Simmons, executive director of the American Heart Association, Hampton Roads. Helping to get more kits to students is instrumental.
The CPR kits will be distributed among NNPS middle and high schools. Darrell Pankratz, NNPS executive director of secondary teaching and learning and K-12 programs, expressed the school division’s gratitude for them and explained ways they will allow expansion of the health and physical education curriculum to include CPR in seventh grade.
