The Dearborn STEM School, set to open next week in Roxbury. (Kim Tunnicliffe/WBZ NewsRadio 1030)
BOSTON (WBZ-AM) -- With the new school year comes a state-of-the-art new school building in Boston.
The Dearborn STEM School, an early college academy for grades 6 through 12, will welcome nearly 500 students next week. The $73 million, open-air-designed school has something for every student--a band and choral room, a dance studio, a gymnasium, and three modern wood shops.
"3D printers, laser printers, real hands-on instructional learning," said Brian McLaughlin, Chief of Staff for the Boston Public Facilities Department, as he led a handful of reporters on a tour of the building Wednesday. "Right through this door, we have a welding booth, we have a paint booth. We have dust collectors, so there'll be saws on these tables. This is going to be the heart of the STEM education for this building."
Students can get an up-close look at the school's mechanical and boiler rooms to learn how the heating and air conditioning equipment works. The interactive rooms show, in real time, how the building's climate control systems are working.
"The amount of air being pushed through, the temperature of the air, the amount of water, the water temperature," McLaughlin said. "You can come up here and see exactly how that works, and how it runs through the building."
The school will focus on teaching skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Kim Tunnicliffe (@KimWBZ) reports