Wiseburn Unified students showcase robotics; district rolls out K–6 computer science and CAD courses

At the Jan. 16 Wiseburn Unified School District board meeting, STEM teacher Andy Desirian and a student team presented the district's robotics and computer science work and called out classroom- and competition-level successes.

Desirian told the board the district's goals for 2024'25 include: every TK'5 student will build and program a robot; all sixth-grade students will take a computer science course; and the district will continue to expand CAD instruction. "So we are on our second year of our program and I would like to give a program update," Desirian said as he described classroom staffing, Khan Academy lessons for sixth grade and a nine-week Autodesk Inventor CAD module.

Nut graf: The presentation linked classroom work to workforce needs. Desirian cited a California Department of Education figure discussed in the meeting that, he said, showed a large shortfall in computer science graduates relative to projected jobs in the state. "We have basically 45,000 unfilled computer science jobs. And of those computer science jobs, we only have 9,000 students that graduated with computer science degrees in the state of California," Desirian told the board.

Desirian described elementary staff who run the program (Alyssa, Katie and new member Adrian), work to secure grants and partnerships, and hands-on experiences such as 3D printing and donated equipment that volunteers and parents have refurbished. He credited a Northrop Grumman aerospace partnership and a Wolf Trap grant for supplemental programming and said the district fielded multiple teams at an aerospace hackathon; one classroom team placed third.

A Herndon School competition team of students summarized a research project pairing robotics and environmental testing. Student Ethan opened the demonstration; Jacob described a hypothesis and testing protocol; Oscar reported conclusions: "Our experiment shows that popular growers mix fertilizers contain synthetic material and chemicals that negatively impact their environment," Oscar said during the presentation. Student Winston described the team's time commitment and competition experience.

Board members and Superintendent Blake Silvers praised the effort. Silvers noted industry feedback gathered at a local 'spotlight' event that emphasized presentation and communication skills for students entering STEM fields: "The overwhelming thing that came out of that from all pretty much across the board, all industry partners, was the ability to present and to communicate their findings," Silvers said.

The presentation included program metrics shared by Desirian: roughly half of sixth graders had completed the district's nine-week computer science module as of the meeting, and many students had taken and passed the course'level assessments. The teacher also highlighted student speed and mastery in CAD tasks and described plans to pilot student teacher assistants for hands-on lab work.

Ending: The board did not take formal action on the presentation. Staff said the district would continue to expand the computer science and CAD offerings and return with operational details as the program scales.