BP America Donates $30,000 to Decatur City Schools Foundation for Wetland’s Edge

BP America and the BP Decatur Chemical site today donated $30,000 to the Decatur City Schools Foundation to support the Wetlands Edge Environmental Center (WEEC). A partnership formed 15 years ago between Decatur City Schools and BP, the Wetland Edge Environmental Center has provided an important educational mission, improving wildlife education in the heart of Decatur.Decatur City Schools Foundation believes that every student deserves a chance to succeed and that the future well being of our community starts with our schools. Educational opportunities such as Wetland’s Edge provide our students with an enhanced Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics (STEM) experience to prepare our students to be competitive in science.

The Decatur City Schools (DCS) system serves more than 8,600 students in Decatur, Alabama. The district is composed of two high schools, three middle schools, and 12 elementary schools. WEEC has served over 60,000 students and adults from Decatur. The partnership provides environmental and conservation educational opportunities to students from the Decatur schools’ K-12 curriculum who visit the facility and the 530+ acre wildlife habitat. The Wetlands Edge Environmental Center and the hands-on learning opportunities that it offers have become part of a special curriculum that is unique to the Decatur City Schools’ educational experience.

The center houses numerous live displays, showcasing more than 70 native species. In addition, more than two miles of trails traverse the habitat, enabling visitors to see several diverse ecosystems, including a swamp, a marsh, a pond, bottomland hardwoods, upland species, a monoculture of young pines, and an old oak grove climax community.

As one of the largest taxpayers in Morgan County and an employer of over 430 employees, BP Decatur plays a vital role in the economic infrastructure of the region. Since the 1960s, the BP Decatur site has supported North Alabama organizations that provide advancements in areas of education, health, human services, and environmental awareness. More information on BP is available at www.bp.com.

Comments

Funding from 3M Keeps the Wheels Turning for Career Tech STEM Initiatives

3M has awarded a grant to Decatur City Schools Foundation that will provide resources for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education f ocused on career- and college-readiness for more than 500, 6th– 12th-grade students. The Foundation is committed to working with Decatur City Schools to ensure that students graduate ready to enter the workforce or continue their education. In August, Decatur City Schools combined the Career Technical Education (CTE) efforts of Austin and Decatur High Schools at one center on a portion of the campus previously occupied by Austin High. The center is known as The Career Academies of Decatur. The center provides students the opportunity to explore the type of career or secondary education that they may want to pursue through the use of CTE pathways. STEM career pathways, such as Engineering and Machine Tool Technology, are popular with area students. Introducing students to a variety of career pathways beginning

The Cure to "Worksheetitis" Teaches Kids Computer Science

Are your students suffering from Worksheetitis? Tired of learning their lessons through written work alone? Luckily, our elementary teachers learned the cure, and thanks to some help from Representative Terri Collins, they’ll be getting the tools to cure it in their classrooms soon. The Technology Department of Decatur City Schools hosted Professional Development for all DCS elementary teachers last month. The gym at Oak Park Elementary School became an escape room, where all of the teachers worked through stations to collect items they would need to escape. To complete each station, though, they had to learn some new things. At each one, they found a new tool or game related to coding, computer science, and technology. From simple tools like Coding Hopscotch that teaches sequencing, to Augmented Reality Cubes that let the user hold our Solar System in the palm of their hand to discover new facts about the planets, our teachers were able to see a wide variety of new wa

Representative Collins Provides Community Grant Education Funding for ACT Prep

This Fall, Decatur’s high schools started their second year using John Baylor Test Prep to help students get ready to take the ACT. For the past three years, every 11 th -grade student in the state of Alabama has taken the ACT as a way to measure the effectiveness of education among the state’s school districts. While the test for standards is changing this year, the ACT remains an important exam for many students in our district. Often a student’s ACT score determines whether or not the student is eligible to attend the university of their choice. After acceptance, their score will help the scholarship office decide whether or not to grant the student scholarship money to attend. With the high cost of attendance for both two- and four-year institutions, scholarship money can be the deciding factor in whether a student will seek post-secondary education. John Baylor Test Prep provides students with online access to test-prep sessions for the ACT, Pre-SAT, and SAT—all of whi

Decatur City Schools Foundation

Search This Blog