Islip’s Future City team spent their February break in the nation’s capital, competing in the Future City National Finals after coming out on top in the New York regionals. The four middle school students from the district’s EXCEL program – Molly Breakstone, Victoria Pearsall, Sofia Rubinson and alternate Darienne Rogers – finished 10th and came home from Washington, D.C. with a trophy for Best Project Plan.

Future City, a national, project-based learning experience where students in grades 6-8 imagine, research, design and build cities of the future, encourages students to design waste management systems for residential and small business use.

The Islip students’ work involved building a virtual city with SimCity software as well as writing a research essay, constructing a scale model and delivering a formal presentation.

When not representing Islip at this prestigious STEM competition, the students and their families visited the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, White House, and several museums on the National Mall.

“It was amazing to meet students from all over the nation – plus two teams from China – who have been working so hard to meet fantastically challenging goals and to create innovative futuristic technologies which are plausible in city concepts of the future,” said EXCEL director Julia Johnson. “Just to make it to this level of competition is quite a challenge and for us to leave D.C. with a specialty national award is outstanding.”