Multiple districts — Thanks to a partnership with Kent ISD, both Northview Public Schools and Kelloggsville Public Schools have introduced brand-new Manufacturing and Engineering Education Reimagined for All labs for middle-schoolers this fall.
Kent ISD, already home to a MEERA regional training center, was awarded $750,000 from a 2026 Congressionally Directed Spending community project grant through U.S. Sen. Gary Peters’ office. The ISD invested about $414,000 of the federal grant to expand the program into the two districts.
MEERA is a national initiative introducing middle school students to manufacturing and engineering careers. Each district received MEERA lab equipment and a two-year subscription service providing curriculum updates, software, technical support and instructional resources. After the two years, the districts will need to take on the subscription costs.
The initiative is designed not just to expose students to STEM and career opportunities, but also to build confidence that they could succeed in those fields, said John Kraus, Northview’s strategic project specialist.
“If we can inspire kids to believe that they can do it and build that confidence, that’s a huge goal,” Kraus said. “We just want kids to come out (of middle school) with that sense of awareness, that confidence, and bring that with them into high school.”
Partnerships Made It Happen
Northview had for a while been looking for ways to both expand on the success of its hands-on learning in fifth and sixth grades and also bring career and technical education (CTE)-related curriculum to more grades, Kraus said.
“We just didn’t have the tools to be able to do that in a meaningful way,” he said. “(Kent ISD) introduced us to MEERA and the regional training center, and when (Superintendent) Dr. (Christina) Hinds saw that, she just said, ‘Our kids have to have this experience. Let’s make it happen.’”
Northview and Kelloggsville originally applied, but were not selected, for a Michigan Department of Education CTE Expansion Grant to bring MEERA to their districts. Kent ISD had been working with the districts on developing the CTE program as part of the intermediate district’s CareerPrep 2030 initiative, which aims to have 10,000 students in CTE and similar programs by 2030, said Joe Lienesch, Kent ISD director of career and technical education.
Middle schools were seen as another avenue for expanding CTE programs, after the state changed its guidelines this year to allow middle-school CTE-certified programs, he said. Previously, only high schools were eligible to have them.
Having previously secured the same Congressionally directed federal grant for the Kent Career Tech Center’s manufacturing center, Lienesch said Kent ISD decided to apply for it to support the districts that did not receive the state funding.
“We were thinking, this is too good to be true,” Kraus said. “I think we were kind of on pins and needles because we weren’t sure if it was going to happen. … This would not have happened without (the ISD).”
As a condition of receiving the federal grant, Northview and Kelloggsville must apply for CTE certification from the state, with assistance from Kent ISD.
‘We need every kid to have this. We eventually want the lab used every day, every hour of the school day.’
— Crossroads Middle School Principal Lindsey Grinwis
Strengthening the STEM Pipeline
By adding a MEERA lab at Kelloggsville Middle School, the district hopes to strengthen its STEM pipeline from middle school to high school, said John Linker, Kelloggsville’s work-based learning coordinator.
“It matched up with what we already had,” Linker said, noting that the district’s high school STEM program includes computer numerical control (CNC) machining, virtual welding, 3D printing and computer-aided design. “What this package had at the middle school level was a perfect segue for what we have at the high school.”
The middle school’s STEM teacher, Grady Giem, received MEERA training over the summer. Eighth-graders in the robotics elective are receiving both the MEERA and VEX Robotics curriculum, while seventh-graders in computer science are also being introduced to MEERA.
The district hopes to expand the program next year, offering MEERA 1 and robotics to seventh-graders and MEERA 2 to eighth-graders. Linker said they are hoping that word-of-mouth will help to build the program as it did in the high school, which more than doubled its number of students in STEM programs this year.
Within the first few weeks of school, students are already getting experience with the Tinkercad app, 3D printers and CNC machines. Giem said the program exposes students to a range of potential careers.
“CNC machinist is a trade, welder is a trade, electrician is a trade,” Giem said. “I feel like this class introduces them to more careers at once than any other.”
Making STEM Inclusive
In Northview, Kraus said one of the district’s top priorities is to create career technology education opportunities that are not only accessible but inclusive.
That’s where Crossroads Middle School’s new lab comes in. Principal Lindsey Grinwis said once she heard about MEERA, she subsequently rebuilt the entire Crossroads schedule to make sure that every seventh-grader could take the class.
“I was like, ‘We need every kid to have this,’” she said. “We eventually want the lab used every day, every hour of the school day.”
This summer, MEERA technicians revamped the school’s STEM classroom to install 3D printers, CNC machines, virtual reality trainers and other equipment.
Over the course of this school year, Crossroads will offer 10 sections of its seventh-grade STEM class using the MEERA lab. Each class will expose students to coding, robotics and other career skills.
Grinwis said the goal for the 2027-28 school year is to expand the program by offering an elective option to eighth-graders who want to continue their STEM experience.
“I hope it sparks a desire for more,” said Grinwis. “For them to think about what’s next. To get them thinking, ‘I loved this. I’ve never had an experience like this.’ And then we can talk about what they could do in eighth grade, or in high school, or at the Tech Center, and what those opportunities could look like.”
Reporter Beth Heinen Bell contributed to this story.
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