$5,000 Grant!

Oh this is the best news! LMS educator Reba Griggs is Soaring to Success! Mrs. Griggs was seeking to update and expand the highly popular LMS Drone Club, and she has been awarded $5,000 to update this extra-curricular technology program to replace an aging, non-functional fleet of Tello Education drones. Serving a student body with approximately 90% identifying as economically disadvantaged, she can now purchase programmable Echo Drones, field elements, and a dedicated safety arena from Pitsco Education. The hands-on technology will immediately expand extracurricular capacity from 9 to 20 students, opening doors for female and low-socioeconomic learners through targeted counselor referrals and beginner-friendly, intimidation-reducing workshops. Students will transition from simple manual piloting to block-based and text-based coding configurations, using autonomous flight paths to physically observe variables, conditionals, loops, and interactive debugging cycles in real-time. In addition to regular coursework across 6th, 7th, and 8th grades, students will apply their engineered algorithms at Texas Tech University's annual "Air Battles" competition. Finally, Mrs. Griggs' program's impact will be rigorously assessed through quantitative growth metrics, targeting an 80% proficiency rate in performance debugging tasks and a 20% increase in student computational thinking scores. We are so proud that LMS students will benefit from Mrs. Griggs making a difference. Levelland ISD has the best educators always yearning to make learning more engaging for students! Way to go Mrs. Griggs!
