RVC Students Touch the Sky With Star Lab

A select group of sixth graders got to take a trip to the North Pole on Thursday and make it back in time for sixth-period lunch. 

Through the help of a $15,000 grant from the Rockville Centre Education Foundation, the district purchased a Star Lab — a portable planetarium — that every student in each school could use for a variety of lessons on astrology, Earth Science and constellations, among other subjects.

Students along with administrators were treated to a presentation of the Star Lab on Thursday, where everyone was taken on a virtual trip to the North Pole and witnessed the beauty of a star-filled night sky. 

The Star Lab has been used in the district for years, school officials said, but it would rent the equipment and pay someone to run it, which became too costly. Matt Greenberg, an eighth-grade Earth Science teacher at the middle school, wrote the grant that bought the Star Lab for the district. "It's like a virtual field trip," he said. "We can show them the nighttime sky in the Northern Hemisphere. They can see a crystal clear image of every star."

The Star Lab comes with two cylinders — the cylinders are fitted with holes, so when placed over a small light inside the planetarium, a virtual starry night is created on the walls inside it —  or virtual lesson plans, and the district can purchase additional ones for $300 a piece. 

The Star Lab takes a few hours to inflate and can hold 20-30 students inside it, Greenberg said, and every child can benefit from it. "We can do high level questions and it runs from kindergarten to grade 12," he said. "There are lessons for every subject and every learner."

Greenberg added that he took a three-day training course to get certified to use the lab. Chris Pellettieri, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction in the district, said that without the RVC Education Foundation, this would not be possible. "In this economic climate, we couldn't pay for it," he said. "The Ed Foundation works with us to educate our students and we are grateful for their generosity."

Delia Garrity, president of the Education Foundation, said the foundation debates which projects to supply grants for, and this one was a no-brainer. "We knew it could go to all seven schools," Garrity said. "Though it's an expensive grant, when you look at something like this and it hits 3,600 kids, that's a homerun for us."