LONGMEADOW – The Longmeadow School Committee was host to a series of accomplished students from the district at their April 9 meeting, including students from Center School who proposed the plastic bag ban to the town in May of last year, as well as Longmeadow High School (LHS) FIRST Robotics team.

Center School teacher Valerie Fritz and three of her former students attended the School Committee meeting to share a little bit about how they became involved and interested in the environment and plastic bags over the 2017-2018 school year.  In fact, the students became so interested in the topic after their discussions in class that they decided to take the topic of banning plastic to a Town Meeting vote. Ultimately, at the May 8 Town Meeting, the town voted to ban lightweight, non–biodegradable, single use, plastic carryout bags in the town.

The students explained to the board that in Fritz’s class they read two books about how bad plastic bags were for the environment.

“We were so moved by it that we started to learn more about it and started to make goals to ban them in Longmeadow,” sixth grader Luca shared.

The students started by focusing on banning single-use plastics in the school by placing containers in the building to put plastic bags in, sixth grader Sophia explained.

When the committee asked why plastic bags needed to be banned specifically, sixth grader Francesca shared, “They pollute the world and they take thousands of years to break down and a lot of animals think they’re food and then millions of animals die.”

School Committee member Susan Bell asked the students if they had expected to be able to ban single-use plastic bags in town, to which they shared that they knew they’d be able to do something in the schools but they didn’t expect to be able to ban them from the town as a whole. This, Luca said, shows that “anyone can make change.”

Not only did the School Committee present each student with a certificate congratulating him or her on their accomplishment, Fritz offered each student a large framed gift which contained their Scholastic News feature, their presentation and an article on them that was featured in the newspaper.

“This is a national publication [Scholastic News] and for you guys to be featured in that is really impressive and it speaks to how important your project was and what an impact it has,” said Superintendent Marty O’Shea.

Next in the meeting, LongMetal Robotics offered a presentation to the School Committee to share more about their accomplishments as the LHS Robotics team. The team is a part of FIRST Robotics, which is a nonprofit that stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.” FIRST hosts competitions that bring together students that are enthusiastic about sciences by creating a robot.

“Every year in January a new game is released than previous years and teams have six weeks to build, design, program and do everything to create the best possible robot to compete in that game,” LongMetal Robotics member and LHS student Will shared.

The students will be attending the upcoming competition, the District Championships. This years challenge was “space-themed” the students explained. The students had to be able to pick up specific items with their robot to “repair their spaceship,” as well as trapping cargo and store it safely away. In addition, they had the opportunity to gain bonus points by having their robot climb up to 19 inches off the ground, which their robot affectionately named “Major Tom” is able to do.

The robotics team walked the School Committee through the inner workings of Major Tom and its functions. They then shared that they participated in two competitions, one at Western New England University, and then another in Hartford, CT. They ranked seven  out of 38 teams at the event, and ended up being the alliance captain of the fifth seed alliance, to which they subsequently won the quarter finals, making it to the semi-finals.

“The Hartford event is generally considered the toughest in New England before the championship, so being able to do that well was an honor for all of us,” Will said.

The students will be competing at Worcester Polytechnic Institute over the upcoming weekend.

“I was thinking about the work of the robotics team and the connection between the younger students with the plastic bag project and I wrote down six words: study, plan, design, create, apply, present. Those are like the hallmarks of true learning, and how can we take this type of activity and amplify it and expand it into the nooks and crannies of this district, and that’s a really powerful question. I want to thank you guys for showing us what real optimal learning conditions can look like,” O’Shea said. “When you mix in your passion, your poise and all that and the supportive parents and the community, a lot of great things can happen.”