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Middle Schoolers Win First Prize at Future City Competition

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Four middle school students from the district’s EXCEL program for the academically gifted – Abby Alfano, Erica DeLapi, Emily Lewis and Jaci Narducci – won first place in the 27th annual Future City Competition in New York City on Jan. 19, beating out 43 other regional teams.

“Our team has been working hard since last June to prepare for this five-part competition, and their hard work paid off,” said EXCEL coordinator Julia Johnson.

DiscoverE’s national, project-based engineering program Future City enables students in grades 6-8 to imagine, research, design and build cities of the future using “SimCity” software. Future City’s 2018-2019 theme of “Powering Our Future!” tasks student participants to design innovative power grids for their future cities that can withstand and quickly recover from the impacts of a natural disaster.

The Islip foursome came home from Manhattan with trophies, medals and prizes including iPads and Amazon gift cards. They will move on to the next phase of the competition, spending February break representing New York at the Future City National Finals in Washington, D.C., competing against teams from across the nation as well as the globe.