Surrounded by a pile of boxes, Moreau Heights Elementary students tore into packages Thursday. Their faces lit up like Christmas morning as they pulled out engineering projects, robots, coding kits and marble runs, and showed them to their friends.
Beyond just being fun, the hands-on items are intended to provide students with new classroom learning opportunities in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, or STEM.
Moreau Heights wasn't the only school to receive the items. Through Elenco Electronics' donations of STEM items worth a total of more than $300,000, kits will be distributed to schools throughout the Jefferson City School District.
JC School Board Member Brad Bates was able to help start the process of securing the donation through a phone conversation with a good friend since childhood, Bill Broyles, who is now vice president of operations and supply chain at Elenco Electronics, a company that provides educational STEM products and equipment to consumers and schools.
Broyles said the company was coming up on a busy season of donating STEM products to schools.
"Did you know that Jefferson City is starting a STEM school?" Bates asked Broyles. Could any of that donation come to Jefferson City schools, where Bates and Broyles had been students, he wondered.
The JC Schools Foundation helped to facilitate the donation, and students were able to open the items this week.
"We are proud to support the Jefferson City School District in their emphasis on STEM learning for their students," said Broyles said in a news release from the district. "STEM promotes creativity, problem-solving skills, and teamwork while helping to develop technical and critical thinking. As the district is located at the heart of Missouri state government, we cannot think of a more ideal location in which to invest in our future leaders."
In total, five truckloads of 50,000 STEM items made their way to the district, which was able to store the items in a warehouse provided by Immaculate Conception Catholic Church while the district took inventory and sorted the items according to age level.
Bates said it was refreshing to see the smiles and excitement as the students unboxed the donations. He said it reminded him of why he ran for school board in the first place.
Superintendent Bryan McGraw said it was special to see children excited about "learning opportunities" as they opened the boxes.
The district anticipates there may be some items left over, so it plans to reach out to the local diocese to see whether it might take the remaining items.
Anna Campbell/News Tribune
Kindergarten student Allah Julious, left, and fourth-grader Marco Desha, center, unpack a box of STEM kits.