Moss Haven Elementary is blessed with a solid support group: the Lake Highlands community, says Principal Mary Mamantov.
Moss Haven parents, community business leaders and neighboring homeowners recently donated more than $40,000 to update the school’s technology and build a science lab.
“A group of parents just took the ball and ran with it,” says Alan Engle, and intermediate teacher at Moss Haven, 9202 Moss Farm. “And they haven’t stopped running.”
Last year, Moss Haven faculty and parents concluded the school desperately needed a science lab, says Mamantov, who has been the school’s principal for 11 years.
“We really believe the main job of an elementary is to teach reading, writing and math,” Mamantov says. “Science is the perfect subject to do all of that. While they’re learning concepts about science, they’re reading, writing and doing math.”
So parents rallied the community and collected more than $20,000, which was stored in a savings account for the science lab, Mamantov says.
The faculty coordinated installation efforts with RISD last summer, Mamantov says. The lab has been up and running since fall of 1996.
The lab includes everything from test tubes and beakers to a televised microscope, Engle says. Each student table in the room has an outlet to allow students to do experiments at their own table rather than in a restricted area of the room.
All of the lab’s contents are mapped out in a manual for the faculty and students, Engle says.
The faculty made a concentrated effort to make the lab accessible and user-friendly to increase science lab participation among staff and students.
“The mere mention of these science labs, and these kids are going nuts,” he says.
Moss Haven’s PTA donated $20,000 last year, which the PTA raised from its annual auction, to update the school’s computer system, Mamantov says.
RISD matched the funds donated by the PTA to fund installation of computers, network all school computers to the district’s system, and hook the computers to the Internet, Mamantov says.
Children are monitored by their teachers when they tap onto the Internet with bookmarks that only allow children to open specific web pages, Engle says.
Each classroom in the building has three Apple Macintosh computers, one Compaq computer and a television monitor.
“For an elementary school, this is truly exceptional,” he says, opening a tall, wood-stained cabinet filled with brand new microscopes.
“The kids are literally a double-click away from the Internet.”
