welcome to another edition of commissioners corner my name is shelley freeland eddie and i'm the vice mayor for the city of sarasota and we have a wonderful show for you today i am so excited to talk to you about economic development from a different perspective from the spectrum of education i have three wonderful guests here with me this afternoon and we're going to talk about economic development through the new engineering program at booker high school dr shelley nice to have you i am so excited to be here thanks for having us all right well introduce your colleagues to us absolutely again my name is tina mcrae ok i know that the engineering program at booker has been around for a short time but there have been a lot of great and exciting changes and new additions and things that are only happening at booker high school so tell us about that we are very excited yes first and foremost we been around for a couple of years but this year we've added some new additions to our program and we've just received approval to operate the district's first drone program so i'm going to let either tina our martha talk about book or high school excit program that we have i'm going to defer to tina because she's actually taking the lead on the drone program here a supporter we started with a proposal to fly a commercial drone where the only one in sarasota county and we're going to start with the different levels different size drones so they can get the skills that they need and then the ones that work their way up say in the program will be flying a commercial level drone and be able to get their f a a license and actually become remote pilots is it true that you actually have the designation of a special recognition by the f a a for the use of drones ok and tell us how important it is to the city of sarasota it's very important it's opening doors for other businesses use them we've actually had some workings talks with some real estate agents wanting commercial video shot of places that are for sale or for their their restaurants their events that they have so i mean it's a huge doors for sarasota county to start a business area that right now is very small here and what do you think that does martha for a job creation here in the city of sarasota for students that are graduating from sarasota high schools what opportunities with it open up for them to stay here and actually work in our community well actually there's a big initiative right now to take our local students educate them locally through the technical college and college level and then employ them afterwards so this drone program is an example of a great idea that we're going to have where we can start introducing engineering design to students they can actually experience the skills that they need to operate the drones and then hopefully turn around and become employed right here so that this particular program is a perfect example of what we're trying to achieve in c t education here in sarasota to your program will we be able to say that we have the skills that are needed here in sarasota to draw employers to come to our city and bring jobs to our community we absolutely do have the talent here i mean one of the big celebrations we've had a book or recently is one of our students got a perfect score on solid works and that's a global skill recognition so it's known worldwide in the student got a perfect score on it so that's just an example th booker has the talent that's needed in this area we just need to find it and develop it doesn't show and where you're reminding our audience about sol it works and what that entails most companies when whenever you come up with an idea and you want to solve a problem you have to come up with a design for it and it's done on the computer so this is computer aided design to be in three d modeling so that students can actually draw tested out of value a bit before they build it and then they can continue to redesign so solid works in inventor which are both introduced  tina's classroom are critical to any of the engineering design firms in global manufacturing here dr shelley and know that as a part of the program we've talked about the drones but my understanding is that you also have a thriving robotics program at the high school that is correct yes and this year we're going to have the first all girls team from the high school level that they're going to be competing so again and i can share with you all the wonderful things going on before i turn it back over to tina to talk about our girls team let me talk to you about how the drone program came to booker high school if i may just we pride ourselves in listening to our students being students centered and it was brought to my attention i was in a meeting with my superior and all the sudden i have a knock on the door and i open the door and we have our ballance here mr mcra with the student and the student his name is bailey and bailey had actually worked part time in the summer he earned enough money to buy his own drone he purchased it was building and design and was flying and i was taken aback by that and it was from that idea that this entire initiative started and so now bailey is now excited and sharing it with other people in it's actually beginning to gain a lot of recognition and the reason why i share that yes we're here to talk about economic development but when it comes to technology and when it comes to listening to the student it's all going hand in hand it's something that he experienced on his own it is unbelievable and when i think about the drone it wasn't just a joy it's all the parser he attached to it and he went out to local companies and he was able to purchase cameras that he actually placed on his own drone and what we develop and what we're born into it actually started from that of a student so soon is a very important book a high school so i want to go back to jean and talk about more students  and we went to states this year and competed and we took our robot up there and it was a mix it was see we had six three girls three boys and they decided that three the girls like you know we want to do our own mike ok so this year we have three girls one's a softball player one is a competitive swimmer and one's a freshman so i mean they're all over the spectrum and they are going to compete and are going to really push the r e c foundation and vex initiative for this year which is girl power and that's you know trying to get more women in the engineering fields because they're horribly under represented and i was going to mention that you know as a part of the system program we hear across the country and here locally what the push is to engage young ladies and females in the field of engineering and the scholarships and education opportunities but today i'm proud to say that we're talking about vocational and employment opportunities that are coming out of this education program and dr shelley i know you always talk about there's two prongs to what booker high school does in terms of college and career ready and this is career ready and yes another thing i want to talk about is you know when we look at schools in the area we don't think of schools as a tourism driver talked to me about the diversity of students who come to book a high school whether or not there is a wait list for this program and what booker's programs have done it to put sarasota on the map in terms of folks moving into our district to attend to her high school absolutely our diversity at booker high school we have a third a third a third about twelve hundred students a third african american at their hispanic and other caucasian and when it comes to engineering feel last year we only had a part time teacher and with then one year we went from our part time  full time teacher the numbers are constantly growing and the goal is by the time we move into the eighteen nineteen school year there will be a wait list for book or high schools program we do have engineering programs at the various schools and they're all driving in different areas so we we must give credit to all the schools that are moving in that direction so i'm very excited about that but i book a high school we've tried to create programs that are definitely aligned to the vision that we have in our vision is that one hundred percent of us years will graduate college or career ready and become productive members of our society so the drone program is going to help us to really hone in on that that technical piece that sort of occasion a piece i believe miss mcquaid mentioned earlier about how when his students become a pilot license a license or of having their license they're going to earn that sort of occasion and that's what we're excited about because then they will be able to walk out of book a high school into a work deal into the workforce and our goal is that they make above minimum wage or they go to college they are prepare be successful so it's definitely aligned to the vision that we have for all of our students now because it's a wonderful initiative i'm going to x market she will talk about how do you see this tying into the tourism area locally the way it works is tina mentioned say technology student competition are so sation competition josel mention facts robotics and what it does is it takes that the topics that the students are learning in class and it allows them to benchmark against area schools it also takes it regional state national and world so right now in the next robotics sarasota county just came back from the world championship where the sarasota high school team was top twelve in the world four out of over sixteen thousand teams that were competing so booker is in this class of students where we have this keyword collaborate in the pits and compete on the field so booker has the ability to network in with all these area teams to bring themselves up to the world class level with technology student association all enduring programs in florida need to attach themselves to a student organization most people are familiar with the future business leaders or future farmers in this case it's technology student association florida has the largest state membership in the nation and we are among the top competitors in this year the national conference will be in orlando and booker will be competing in fact they're going because they are a new chapter and they want to learn what it takes to compete at the top level so we have students right in our area that are competing nationally and globally with technology skills and that kind of reflects back to the quality of the labor force and when people come here we have the resources for them to start their companies and the reason that it's so important as i see it is that you know from a city standpoint we talk about our public and private partnerships and it's not very often that we talk about the school system and the school boards being an economic partner and so that's why this is so exciting and i want to share it with our viewing audience because it opens up opportunities for partnerships with the chamber for partnerships with the economic development commission for partnerships with municipalities city and state government and for us to be able to look to state and federal grants to be able to improve our programs in the local level and as we are talking to stakeholders about coming into the city to do business we now have a pool of jobs ready applicants that are certified in specific areas that are ready to hit the ground on the road ready to work into the community it's like you bring the business we have the employees and i see it as a game changer from the inside out one of the things that i want to talk to you about also dr shell was in terms of the expansion of your program i understand from the engineering perspective that there are already partnerships in place both with state college of florida and the university of florida engineering department someone talk to me about what that partnership is like innovative things and i'm sure at the innovation station it's an initiative by the university of florida because they have so many applicants into the engineering program that we are one of the models or incubators to start us students at our local state college so students will go to the state college of florida for the first two years they will be university of florida students and then they will take their last two years and spend it on on campus up in gainesville so they've targeted booker high school as an as a school they would like to recruit future engine ears this is an exciting opportunity for booker to be recognized that way to have you have your first student we already have our first unit that will be starting next year oh dane he's a phenomenal young man and we already have two boys lined up for next year when they graduate that are fast track in that way and one of them is evan who pass the solid work certification so i mean the talent is there and the skill set is there and we're working diligently hard to get the certifications there so when they walk out they more than compete they overshadow other applicants because sarasota has the skill set necessary if i can talk about the skill set when we think about robots and we think about the coding program and we think about the engineering the reason i mention coding because coding is something that all people are interested in coding is a part of everything that we're currently doing and i engineering program including the  that ability to be able to network skills at the kids are learning problem solving critical thinking and being able to go deep in their critical thinking when they're asked to create and to come up with these opportunities that's going to make something move to critical thinking that's on believable and so that i take siteman in that because that's something that we are preparing kids for jobs that don't exist so while you may not be able to prepare them exactly for that job you can help them with the necessary critical thinking skills and giving them the platform and that's why i get really excited so weird we're looking at it from a couple of angles we have the career track which we're talking about today with our drone program and others solve it works and others and then we also have that college track and not only do we have that partnership with the university of florida but we also have an opportunity to take our students to visit on a field trip to the university of florida so there is more collaboration also with local businesses i did not have an opportunity to attend the launch but i think one of you may have attended the lunch where you can talk about all the different businesses in the connections board not just our student but all students who are sort of counting you mentioned earlier the ability to have our students who are in sarasota to be prepared so when they leave and go off to college they come back whole right and that's the exciting piece and i think that's what we're trying to tell us about that collaboration mentoring p c s we recently had we have we're doing several programs to connect the community to the schools and we're looking for more ways to do it but basically we've got the conversation going so the engine the experience engineering luncheon was an opportunity for seniors in sarasota county they're planning to attend a school in the engineering degree in the area of engineering to actually meet engineers and the engineers which was so cool about it brought their products and put them on the table so it's kind of like a speed dating kind of thing sure had a handful so you know it's really just a mechanical engineering get a couple mechanical engineers and they're all talking about the products on the table and the students would rotate every thirty minutes or so to different companies different products and the kids were like why couldn't we have seen this earlier they were so excited so next year we're going to expand it to juniors and have them come in a little bit earlier to get involved  but at the same time where we do manufacturing day where we last fall we had four hundred students ten buses visiting seven or eight manufacturing companies in the area to get a firsthand look at what it looks like to make things in sarasota because there's a surprising amount of manufacturing and design that's going on here and we want the students to get a look at what their future looks like because once a student connects with the university of florida we're they call it a florida or manufacturing company that takes care of so much of the motivation that the teacher has to instill of the parents because when the student sees it they're on board so we're trying to make sure that every student in sharing program is going to graduate with sock shop safety knowledge of tools not just middle and high school have robotics programs which again are the the jobs of the future the jobs just start to come out so this is an exciting time to be a student in sarasota county in a book or walking into that classroom and seeing the excitement on these kids and being able to have an idea and be able to produce a prototype in the class and to be able to do it over and over again it's not just a one it's like go at it you can you can redesign it ten times until you get the way you want that's what the real world is like so you think you talked about that i just want to bring up is that the access that education has provided to employment is critically different from times when i think all of us were in high schools and  the effect that education programs can have on a local industry is also changing and so that's why i thought it was important and we've talked about all of the wonderful opportunities that students have had but dr shelley i understand if there are still some needs in order for the program to be successful talk to us about that we are very excited about the direction that we're going and we have a wonderful opportunity for our viewers to help out with some of those unmet needs we have unmet needs that include everything from purchasing the robotic is something that we're looking at and when our students that are part of t s a program that means mccreight mentioned funding is also needed when the students travel we have school available funds in addition available funds that will pay for the adults to travel but not necessarily for the students so those are two things that we need we're also growing new programs the purchase of the drones is not necessarily included so those are things that we're looking for community support in purchasing at least three of those items and we have other needs as well so i know do you have some exact need for your program in addition to that the that i mentioned is there anything that i missed that you want to just you know the basic consumables is the program grows there's going to be more needed and we do we cover  everything the code things out of the laser out of wood so they can learn how to work with wood because it's so different than anything else in the three d printing materials and things like that consumables that they burn through and i don't want to ever have to limit how much they do it's like ok everybody can only print one so you know because of funding we always end this year we've made it work and it's been phenomenal but that's something that you have not mentioned you know to see every day consumable so they can get more hands on actual experience to teach about the book all day long but the excitement comes in when they put that into actual practice and how many students are in the program this year this year i have eighty one engineering students next year i'm already slotted for  hundred six not counting the twelve t s a kids and keep in mind last year we only had a part time teacher so that gives an example of where we were last year where we are this year and where we are going and it's really important i stressed the importance when we talk about that career track and what we're finding when our students leave us with that certificate they can enter the workforce immediately or they can continue with additional education that  and we're not necessarily talking about going on that college track where they're looking at four years in the range of their salaries one state fans can range from twenty seven thousand all the way up to forty three thousand dollars and our goal at our school is for them to graduate college and career ready so they can become productive members of our society and part of that is ensuring with the ability to make above minimum wage with seventy percent of our students that aren't for you to reduce lines we want to change that cycle so we believe wholeheartedly the way to do that is through high school graduation is an expectation that will open up doors but we want our students to have a little more than that so they can become productive members of our society twenty thirty years from now they're going to be taking care of us and we want to make sure that they are in a position with the necessary skill set and be able to afford the necessities of life so we're really excited about that so i want to make sure that i share that timeframe because it's so very important what has this program done in terms of the excitement and the self esteem of the students know his parents his father's disabled his mother i think works very much you know it's just it's the times this is open doors for evan to be able to help support his parents already it's open the door for us for him to get the college and scholarships and such like that so he can go to college i mean evan every day just comes into class b me but i have other kids like the kid who came in half year and the first thing you do is three d printed name tag and he got so excited  like i did this i made this you know something this little piece of plastic about that big and to watch that feed throughout the classrooms kids that when i started i knew were a dropout risk they're not my class they show up and come to my class you know i had kids going to the only reason i'm here today misty is because i had to class because they're excited to be in there it's engaged a part of their brain i don't think had been before and they want to be there and  tell their friends i mean it's growing already and a lot of the kids we have as our tech ones next year our current booker students who are friends of the kids i have this year so they're really we made paper catapult and the kids walked around the school showing them off to each other mashing shirts now yes because when they went to the state conference in orlando none and we have to remember some of the students here never traveled out of the city of sarasota in so with some of these competitions they get to go to orlando and they're meeting students from all over the country and now they want to have booker on all of their shirts we did get one nation booker t shirts for the team so they could all wear booker t shirts while we were there because they didn't even own booker t shirts you know it's like we don't have the sponsorship yet to be able to buy club shirts that really show what we're about but at least we get to stand up and show where booker and you know with the support and the sponsorship from the community that that will be an issue they can go and show what they're capable of with pride and represent sarasota and book or a school sounds like we need to do a job fair booker high school that's kind of what i'm saying and get some folks to come on and you can display your program and i'm very open people that want to come into the classroom and talk to the absolutely the more the better because it gets them to know book this is with the engineering luncheon i took five students and you know there were students on the way there on the way back they would be quiet they were so excited one of them worked out an internship for the summer at a place i mean they engage them so much so they want to meet the people out there that can tell the answer questions like how much will i really make that's important you know we can quote numbers from studies but talking to someone who does really changes it for them and what about a partnership with the airport you talked about the drones in aviation it's something we're working on because i mean we have to we're within the range that's required by the f a a but we want to work out that partnership with him because i don't wind up a whole nother field  any opportunity i have to open another door for a student to you know leave and i don't think you can get as a part time minimum wage job you know i'm all for absolutely and there's one little important thing here besides the fact that the schools can always use additional funding for these programs that are that are difficult to get funded like the student travel but we also need people from the business community to come into the schools as judges and evaluators because these students when they get ready for competition they don't to lose they want to win and in order to get to that level of competition they need people to help them evaluate in inside the school before they go so if anybody could give up a day like if you're an engineer or you're in a business and you have a day to give to book or high school or any of the schools and say we'll come in we'll take a look at your drone program before you go for certification or before you go to national competition we'll take a look at your dragsters and your robots and we may not know a lot about it but we know how to follow rules and so take a look at what the kids have it gives the students a chance to practice their interview skills their professionalism when they get in front of these judges because they're competing against the best and just by coming into the classroom and offering your time as a judge is very that are doing drones the smaller drums ever discuss with miss one about getting with those schools and we will start having drawn competitions held at booker against the other schools with just basic flying skills you know  a drone competition feature here in sarasota in the next year and wonderful while we've talked about the wonderful things that are going on in booker and the need and two things how do they find you how do they get in touch how do they donate how do they volunteer absolutely there are many ways to contact me or one of the members here that's a part of this team and booker high school they can come directly or they can call us at three five five two nine six seven we're also available online you can go to our website and go to directory and find me of course dr rachel shelley and also tina mcrae were available and i do want to hear from people our doors are always open our physical adjusters three two zero one north orange ave and we're excited about moving forward this program and we will love to have the community we maintain and aid the other ones college and career readiness and making sure that we are preparing our students for those areas and i believe this program as well as all the other programs that we do have a sarasota county will definitely help that go to become a reality so thank you for having us we are excited to be here and we are looking for community support as we continue to make sure we meet the needs of all of the students our diversified students are high school horace so thankful that you came and educated us on what's going on at booker and how high schools are partners in economic development and how we have overlooked the wonderful things that are going on and we won't do that anymore so we are thankful that you're here and one final thing succumb graduations to you dr shelley we just got the news that dr shelley has been nominated as one of the three principles of the year for the state of florida and we believe that she will be number one and so we're waiting to hear the good news and this is a testament to why you were nominated