Suffolk County looking at ways to get ‘ag-ed’ in schools
WHAT’S NEXT?
The county’s department of economic development and planning, which is spearheading agricultural education efforts, is now beginning to survey school districts across Suffolk to understand what kinds of agriculturally-oriented classes might already be offered and to gauge district superintendents’ interest in participating and offering more formal programs, Mr. Bellone told The Suffolk Times Friday.
“While doing that, we are going to be putting together grant applications for funding to develop curriculum,” he said. “I think we can develop a curriculum across different subject areas that incorporates agricultural elements, whether it’s history, business or even math.”
Mr. Bellone said the department is looking into potentially using lessons from the state Agriculture in the Classroom program and said he would only support taking on lesson plans that satisfy Common Core requirements, “rather than adding an additional burden on teachers.”
Depending on interest, the county would create an Agricultural Education School Advisory Board to work on building a database to help match agricultural mentoring and apprenticeship opportunities with schools that have interested students, according to a release about the initiative.
At the high school level, Mr. Bellone said he envisions creating internships and work-study programs involving students and local farmers.
Mr. Gergela said he believes a realistic next step is to create a pilot summer mentor program for interested students, providing them with school credit and a work stipend. He said he’d like to see a four-week program that has participants shadow agricultural leaders in several different areas, one week at a time — including working on a farm, with the LIFB on policy and public outreach, with American Farm Trust on finance and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County on biology.
Moving forward, Ms. Staib said, collaboration between the industry and educational outlets would be key.
“Educators can’t create curriculum in a vacuum, and creating curriculum doesn’t happen overnight,” she said. “You start with a big concept — what people in the industry believe the students really need to know — and then we work backward and figure out how to get [the students] there.”
