The Kutztown School District team placed first overall at the Science Olympiad April 30 and the high school’s Cantalobber team also won first.
Superintendent Kathy Metrick announced the student achievements to the school board during the May 2 meeting.
Metrick noted that the high school’s Cantalobber team, which competes in a physics competition that looks to see which team can launch a cantaloupe the farthest, placed first for the seventh year in a row.
“In the seven years they’ve been in existence, they’ve broken three world records,” Metrick said.
Individual winners on the Science Olymiad High School team included:
1st Place Experimental Design: Zach Hoffman, Garrett Moyer, and Kayla Graff
1st Place Wright Stuff: Zach Hoffman and Ben Clymer
4th Place Air Trajectory: Zach Hoffman and Nathan Hayduk
Middle School team winners included:
Matt Bertsch and Isaiah Nygard: 7th place for Air Trajectory
Bio Process Lab: Evie Mace and Emily Maddock: 5th place
Sara Love and Emma Troutman: Bridge 7th place
Evie Mace and Emily Maddock: Crime Busters 10th place
Marina Lynch and Sara Love: Disease Detectives 6th place
Elastic Launch glider: Steven Reiss and Ryan Troutman 9th place
Evie Mace, Lauren Clymer and Emily Maddock: Experimental Design 14th place
Marina Lynch and Sara Love: Food Science 10th place
Emily Maddock and Lauren Clymer: Fossils 12th place
Trenton Delp and Jason Heffner: Meteorology 7th place
Isaiah Nygard and Sara Love: Mission Possible 5th place
Marina Lynch and Lauren Clymer: Road Scholar 4th place
Matt Bertch and Isaiah Nygard and Jacob Turko: 1st in the state Scrambler
In other news, Kutztown School Board reviewed its online education curriculum.
Kutztown Virtual Academy, the district’s online learning program designed to meet the needs of students grades K-12, currently offers many different online educational products, such as Apex Learning and Fuel Education.
Dr. Chris Harrington, the district’s Director of Technology and Innovative Learning, hopes to add another product to that repertoire.
“Edgenuity is a product that is, in my opinion, higher quality than the others that we use,” said Harrington. “It gives a lot more data analytics to help support both our parents and our teachers.”
“And this support can help us decide what products are the best fit for certain students,” he added.
The district’s only concerns lied with whether the product’s curriculum was aligned with the Common Core Standards.
Dr. Diane Barrie, who serves as the district’s Curriculum Coordinator, vouched for Edgenuity.
“The Pennsylvania Department of Education has an online course catalogue,” she said. “I was the person who reviewed all of its 10th grade literature courses for the state.”
“The recommendations did not evaluate a certain level of quality, but of alignment,” she later said.
Out of the 12 to 15 products reviewed, Barrie claimed that Edgenuity had ranked among the top 3.
Kutztown School Board will hold a Workshop Meeting on June 4.