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First Valley STEM school to open at MCCTC
By Denise Dick
CANFIELD
A new school that emphasizes hands-on learning in a science, technology, engineering, mathematics, manufacturing, energy and entrepreneurship atmosphere opens in the Mahoning Valley next school year.
Valley STEM+ME2 Academy, housed at Mahoning County Career and Technical Center, will be a ninth-and-10th-grade academy.
It will open this fall, but interested parents and students can get a peek at a ribbon-cutting and open house at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Palmyra Road MCCTC. Jim Tressel, president of Youngstown State University, will speak.
“We have about 85 applications, mostly from ninth-graders,” said Ron Iarussi, superintendent of the Mahoning County Educational Service Center and MCCTC.
The application deadline is April 29, and up to 100 students in each of the two grades can attend.
“We needed to get 35 to 40 to financially sustain the program,” Iarussi said.
The ESC, the project’s fiscal agent, applied for a $400,000 state Straight A Fund grant for the academy, but it wasn’t one of the projects funded.
Iarussi said the academy will be self-funded, getting state funding per student, similar to a charter school. To get started, though, MCCTC, the academy’s administrative agent, will front roughly $400,000 for equipment and renovations, and the ESC will reimburse it over time, the superintendent said.
The academy is the only state-authorized STEM school in the Valley.
Vince Colaluca, Austintown superintendent, is the chairman of the Valley STEM+ME2 Academy board.
“It’s a different means of instruction for our students,” he said.
Austintown offers STEM programs in both middle and high schools, Colaluca said. But the new academy, which is a consortium of Valley school districts, could have programs not available in the district’s schools.
“We’ve seen how successful it is in Austintown and figured if we don’t do it as a consortium, then some outside group will come in and do this,” he said.
The consortium includes Austintown, Poland and Struthers school districts with involvement from the ESC, but students from anywhere in Ohio may apply.
An outside operator could get it wrong, similar to what some charter schools do; or if it’s done correctly, siphon students away from traditional public schools, Colaluca said.
Most districts in the Valley lack either the resources or the number of students to offer and sustain such a specialized program, he said.
By developing the academy through a consortium, Valley educators not only retain students but have a say in the programs and curriculum, Colaluca said.
He likened the concept of the new academy to the Unlimited Classroom of Tomorrow, an online school operated by collaborating school districts, and PACE, the alternative school operated through the Mahoning County ESC.
Valley educators worked together to provide those options to students rather than waiting for a for-profit company to come in and do it, Colaluca said.
“It’s project-based learning,” he said. “That’s the biggest difference between this and a regular classroom.”
Students learn by doing and completing projects, Colaluca said.
Valley STEM Academy students still will be students of their home districts, their test scores calculated as part of the home districts. Academy students still will be able to participate in their home schools’ band, sports and other extracurricular activities.
Each applicant up to the 100 capacity will be accepted. If there are more applications than available slots, the academy will use a lottery to select students.
Iarussi said state law doesn’t allow academy officials to exclude students based on ability or other factors.