A new school year always holds many changes, but this year, Elmore City-Pernell schools are blasting into the upcoming semesters with these changes already in motion.
Students of all ages can look forward to a new, hightech program coming to all three campuses: a robotics program. The robotics program has been in the works since spring of 2020, just before the pandemic hit. ECP Elementary received a $25,000 STEM grant from Enable Midstream. This grant was written specifically to develop a robotics program for all grade levels at the elementary school.
In the robotics program, students will learn how to build robots that can perform all kinds of functions. Sheila Riddle, ECP superintendent, is excited to announce that students will also be able to compete in robotics competitions.
Robotics programs are becoming increasingly important as our world progresses further into the technological age. Students partaking in STEM programs will be building skills that can help them in many areas of the workforce they might go into after school. ECP wants to make sure its students have a good head start to these skills.
“Our goal in Elmore City-Pernell is to develop programs that grasp the attention of students and families,” Riddle said. “[The] Elmore City-Pernell School District is embracing technology programs for the future of our students, our district and our community.”
The district expects to complete its new high school during the upcoming school year. The building will include a science lab and a STEM lab; ECP has also renovated the Jim Coffee Technology building to create a science lab and STEM lab for the middle school. These additions and renovations mean that the Elmore City-Pernell school district will have a total of three science labs and three STEM labs.
In order to effectively use these labs, teachers at all campuses will receive professional development to implement robotics into the classroom curriculum, provided by the Chickasaw Nation.
ECP is also going to begin the 2021-2022 school year with a new student drug testing policy. Each month, students active in any extracurricular activities will have a chance of being randomly selected to take a drug test. If the test comes back positive, that student will have varying consequences based on how many tests they have had return as positive.
This new policy is meant to help protect students by discouraging the use of drugs both on and off campus.
A single positive test will see students suspended from participation in all extracurricular activities for two weeks. The student and parent/guardian must attend counseling two times during the suspension period and one follow-up session.
A second positive test will mean the student will be suspended from participation in any extracurricular activity for the remainder of the semester. A third positive retest will see the student suspended from participation in any extracurricular activity for 180 school days.
