UVA putting thousands towards Buford Middle School STEM Lab

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - UVA is putting thousands of dollars from a state funded grant towards a STEM lab school for middle schoolers.

The General Assembly awarded $100 million from the Department of Education to support the Virginia College Partnership Laboratory School program. $200,000 are going to UVA.

“I think in this day in age, What’s more important than computing skills?” UVA School of Education Dean Stephanie Rowley said. “In our case, we chose to partner with a local school district, and in our case, Charlottesville City Schools. We have about a year to plan the whole endeavor.”

Rowley says the lab school will be an extension of Buford Middle School.

“The idea is to work with their teacher over the course of this year to decide the entry point for the additional computing focus,” Rowley said. “We want to make sure that all students have access to the kinds of basic skills that are important to any job these days.”

The lab school will also help Buford Middle School meet the current computer science standards, which were implemented by the Department of Education in 2017.

“Relatively few schools have actually are actually have met those standards at this point, in part because they’re new, and also in part because it’s challenging to add new things to the curriculum,” Rowley said.

The next step in the project is to create an advisory board with members around the community to get a more detailed plan for the project.

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