A total of 18 LEGO Boost Robotics kits were donated Thursday to the Rome school district by the Front of the Class educational charity, the Rome Community Foundation and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Information Directorate.

The kits, geared for students ages 7-12, are designed so that students can program the robots to perform various actions. Five different robots can be built from the kits.

Bill McCormick, president of Front of the Class, said “last spring, we received a couple of requests from Bellemy Elementary School to see if we could help fund an after-school STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) club and provide LEGOs or robotics kits. The recently released LEGO Boost Kits were a perfect fit.”

After talking with Rome school district Superintendent Peter C. Blake about providing the kits to other elementary schools in the district, added McCormick, “we decided to turn it into a program to purchase kits for a number of area school districts. The cost was beyond what Front of the Class could fund” so it reached out to the other organizations and is “extremely grateful for their support.”

Blake expressed appreciation for the donation during the Board of Education meeting Thursday night. He commented “we’re very fortunate” to “have a community that likes to give” for innovative items that help children learn.