This SLO County school district got $1 million gift for high-tech innovation labs, supplies
The San Luis Coastal Unified School District will open innovation labs across all 10 of its elementary schools and send boxes of supplies home with students during the start of its fully-distanced learning fall term, thanks to a $1 million gift from the Harold J. Miossi Charitable Trust.
The large donation was announced in a new innovation lab classroom at Hawthorne Elementary School in San Luis Obispo on Tuesday morning.
The gift marks the launch of San Luis Coastal’s iINNOVATE Initiative, a multi-year program to increase project-based and hands-on learning for all students in the district.
“By equally outfitting all of our schools we are ensuring that every elementary student, nearly 4,000 per year, will enjoy the same unique learning opportunities that come from project-based learning,” said Christine Robertson, executive director of the San Luis Coastal Education Foundation, which is partnering with the Harold J. Miossi Charitable Trust on the gift.
The innovation labs come complete with 3D printers, Lego walls, toolboxes, virtual realty goggles, media labs and laser cutters.
Students will not be allowed on campus to experience the new innovation labs due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced local schools to transition to full-distanced learning.
All 3,750 elementary students in the district will instead be sent home with so-called “challenge boxes” that include new materials every month. Students will pick up their first box on the first day of school: Monday, Aug. 24.
The challenge box for the first month of learning will be about “innovative habits,” Robertson said.
“It’s all about teaching kids how to be mindful, attention to detail,” she said.
Inside the box, students will have basic supplies and materials such as crayons, glue and scissors that they can also use for other projects. There is also a pamphlet describing four different activities in which the students will participate.
Each month’s challenge box has a theme. For example, September’s challenge box will be focused on engineering, October’s box will deal with gardening and November’s box will be about astronomy, Robertson said.
The innovation labs and challenge boxes come at no cost to the school district due to the gift from the Harold J. Miossi Charitable Trust, which donated $100,000 in November 2019 to start planning for the opening of the innovation labs and training of teachers.
The trust donated $1 million in March to build, furnish and provide the materials in the innovation labs.
“Local industry leaders are telling us that what they value most in this next generation of talent is creativity, critical thinking and problem solving skills,” Robertson said. “Job creators are not simply looking for people who have learned existing answers. They need a new generation of thinkers who can invent solutions to problems that don’t even exist yet.
“That is the type of life-long learning we are seeking to cultivate.”
This story was originally published August 18, 2020 at 2:13 PM.
