Decatur City Schools Foundation

This fall we’ve been celebrating the generosity of our community over and over again. Lately we’ve been celebrating because Indorama Ventures has funded exactly $20,000 for materials, tools, and equipment for the Middle School Engineering and Robotics courses. Donna Cooper, Engineering and Robotics teacher at Cedar Ridge Middle School says, “STEM is the future of our children.” Cooper is privileged to make careers in technology accessible to her students. “Students participating in these courses explore a whole new world of thinking while developing hands-on skills for college and future careers,” Cooper says. The new courses will be well-equipped with many of the latest developments in robotics education. Indorama has funded robot kits (with expansion kits and parts), tools, iPads, and a digital projector to use throughout the course. In addition, they have made it possible to purchase 3D printers (with supplies) and an interactive document camera to take...

Imagine the frustration of having 120 students on your class roll, being required to have all of them improve in standardized achievement tests, and then discovering that 3 kids don’t speak English well enough to answer, “What is your name?” But they aren’t exempt from taking the test. Now imagine the frustration of being handed a test in another language, having to sit in a quiet room for hours with no idea what you’re looking at, and watching other kids around the room working as if there’s no problem. This situation is one that our teachers and students are facing every day, across the nation. But in Decatur City Schools, we have a group who are changing that. At the Expanding Children’s Eagerness to Learn (EXCEL) Center, Ressa Chittam and her faculty are changing the game for our school system and changing the educational experience for each individual student they work with. Secondary students in need of language support spend anywhere from half of their day to almo...