MADISON, Ala. — When the new school year begins this fall, every elementary school in the Madison City School District will be staffed with an art, music and STEM teacher. "For the past 25 years, we have alternated by semester," Dr. Ed Nichols, Superintendent for Madison City Schools shares. "So, we're very excited to add six more teachers so that we can have art and music year-round in the elementary school."
Thanks to the school board and STEM grant from the Department of Defense, all elementary students will have art, music and STEM instruction year-round. "Through a Department of Defense grant, we're able to add seven STEM teachers," Nichols shares. "We've been having two teachers rotate through all the schools for just fourth graders, but now we can do K-5 for all students once a week with STEAM activities."
This has been part of MCS's strategic goal for several years and Nichols says it was all about preparing students for the next level. "It was in our strategic plan that we wanted to provide our elementary students more opportunities outside of the regular classroom and we wanted to also develop feeder patterns into our electives at both the middle school and the high school," Nichols shares. "We have about 50 plus electives at the middle school and over 100 at the high school and so by starting these students and making sure they get year-round fine arts and STEM, then we feel like that that pipeline going into the middle school, when they leave elementary school will even be stronger."
According to the Governor’s Advisory Council for Excellence in STEM, Alabama is a national leader in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields such as aerospace, biotechnology, biomedicine, cybersecurity and advanced manufacturing. The state is projected to need more than 850,000 STEM-related occupations by 2026 but may struggle to fill these positions with qualified candidates. Nichols says that adding more instructors will help future job needs. "We're going to add positions for this about 13, which is beneficial for the for the workforce," Nichols shares. "But really, the workforce that we'll see will be down the road. Those students that graduate the STEM classes will offer these students pre-engineering, pre-medical, coding, all of the things that we know are needed in the next 10 to 15 years for jobs in our community."
Nichols also shared that this reality wouldn't be possible without support. " You know, our community supports us. We have a tremendous community in Madison that supports us with their tax dollars, that helps us to expand these programs," Nichols shares. "Then we also have this wonderful partnership through Redstone with the government, through the Department of Defense. You know, just two years ago, we were able to expand at the middle school a medical career program, do it through a grant. So, you know, we take advantage of those opportunities the federal government gives us because of our partnership in this community. And we just look forward to continuing to do that in the years to come."