State Awards STEM Grants For Elementary Schools

The state is giving money to nearly a dozen school corporations to help them offer more science, technology, engineering and math – or STEM – education.

Lawmakers approved $1 million in 2017 for the State Department of Education to offer the grants. The department’s Chief of Workforce and STEM Alliances, Amanda McCammon, says the goal is to help schools begin, or build up existing STEM education in kindergarten through sixth grade.

“Schools are utilizing them for professional development for teachers, and then they’re also utilizing it for purchasing curriculum,” she says.

But McCammon says grant money for a handful of schools isn’t enough in the long-term.

“To be able to really do this and do it well, in a scalable measure, we need more funds to be able to provide our schools, so that they can get their teachers trained and so that our students have access to that high quality STEM education that they deserve,” she says.

McCammon says grant recipients have already planned on how to sustain their STEM initiatives after the extra money runs out, and research done with schools receiving the grants will help others see which tools are effective for training and teaching those subjects in the future.