Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Education Stem Students topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
District honors students and hears a NASA-affiliated near-space research presentation
Summary
The board recognized multiple student award winners (Rotary Students of the Month, PACE and JROTC honorees, employee of the month) and heard a presentation by a student near-space research team participating in the NASA Arizona Space Grant Consortium about Ascend balloon flights and payload development.
The Casa Grande Union High School District governing board used the opening portion of its April 14 meeting to honor students from across its programs and to hear from a high-school team that participates in the NASA Arizona Space Grant Consortium.
Rotary and school leaders recognized students including Avia Weddle (Casa Grande Union), Elizabeth Brubeck (Vista Grande), PACE student Carlos Alaniz, Noeli Soto and JROTC cadets for academic performance, extracurricular leadership and community service. The board and superintendent also announced the April employee of the month, Tammy Santilli, and shared anecdotes about her service to students.
Later, John Morris introduced the district's near-space research team, which participates in the Ascend program run through the NASA Arizona Space Grant Consortium. Team lead Landry Howard and teammates described a multi-phase research roadmap: gathering reliable data from a single payload, splitting payloads to fly together, enabling payload communication with ground rovers, and eventually flying multiple balloons with inter-payload communications. Students detailed their enclosure design, endurance testing methods, programming and the challenges of a recent flight that landed off-target after an extended ride in the jet stream.
The presentation included discussion of hands-on prototyping, programming with Arduino Nano boards, custom PCB design using KiCad, sensor suites (temperature, pressure, humidity, UV), radio telemetry and lessons learned from recovery logistics. Board members praised the students' ability to communicate technical work in accessible terms.
The recognitions and presentation highlighted district extracurricular STEM opportunities and community partnerships; no formal board action was required beyond the recognitions.
