Press

On Friday, May 5, Launch Expeditionary Learning Charter School (Launch), its nonprofit partners, and elected officials unveiled for a seven-acre experiential learning campus with a new high school and world-class facilities where students and community members will build pathways to green jobs and develop solutions to climate change, food injustice, and systemic racism.

 New York Sun Works is a non-profit that builds state-of-the-art hydroponic labs in New York City schools. Their sustainability science and climate education program combines indoor farming with classroom instruction in order to engage children in grades K through 12 in hands-on learning while growing hundreds of pounds of vegetables year round.

US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona made the rounds in New York City on Tuesday, touting investments for teachers and students, as schools get ready for the upcoming academic year. He toured schools in Queens and Brooklyn alongside Congress members Grace Meng and Nydia Velazquez.

Celebrating Women's Month, we met Bolivian immigrant Manuela Zamora, director of NY Sun Works, which aims to help change school classrooms and has started classes in NYC, where her children studied. This program is already present in more than 200 schools between New York City and some in the Hudson Valley.

Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez recently presented a check worth $800,000 in funding to NY Sun Works — a New York-based nonprofit that delivers science and sustainability education through urban farming to K-12 students — to provide schools in Brooklyn and Queens with hydroponic farm technology to enhance each school’s science curriculum.

Just electricity and water. Hydroponics technology is a type of “vertical farming” that allows for the production of plants in an indoor environment without the need for soil. Instead, a mineral-based solution and special LED lighting can be used to nourish plants.

Councilmember Lynn Schulman (D-Forest Hills) in partnership with New York Sun Works, distributed 600 hydroponics kits at three schools in her District 29 on Friday. Students at PS 54 in Richmond Hill, PS 99 in Kew Gardens and PS 144 in Forest Hills will have the chance to participate in a 10-lesson curriculum as they watch their plants grow.

En esta edición de Diálogo Abierto hablamos con Manuel Zamora directora ejecutiva de NY Sun Works sobre horticultura hidropónica en las escuelas en El Bronx y Nueva York.

Caribbean American Democratic Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke said on Friday that she voted in favor of the bipartisan $1.7 trillion spending bill for fiscal year 2023 that passed in the United States House of Representatives.

News 12's Kurt Semder sits down with Dr. Dia Bryant, the executive director of the Education Trust New York, about the latest state math and reading test results.

Students enrolled in the NY Sun Works program are more likely to score higher on the 4th grade science achievement test scores, according data acquired by the nonprofit.

NY Sun Works announced that it has been awarded a $25,000 grant by the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to provide high-quality, climate and environmental science education to public school students. The grant will provide additional resources to implement hydroponic farming technology at each school as well as comprehensive teacher training for science educators.