Storm Lake schools win $40,000 STEM BEST award to expand career learning

The Storm Lake Community School District was selected by the Iowa Governor’s STEM Advisory Council on Jan. 15, 2026, as one of 31 districts statewide to receive a 2026–27 STEM BEST Program award. The district will receive $40,000 to fund curriculum development, staff training, and classroom-to-workplace learning experiences that tie students directly to local business partners.

The grant is intended to deepen ties between Storm Lake schools and Buena Vista County employers, expanding career-connected learning across academic subjects. Program plans will support shared professional learning for educators, externships with local businesses, and youth mentorship from community professionals. Educators, students, and business leaders will work together on practical skills such as marketing, customer service, financial literacy, management, and product development.

A central element of Storm Lake’s proposal is a student-run school store that will serve as a hub for experiential learning. The store will align daily business practices with classroom standards in science, business, and English and will give students leadership roles while providing measurable workplace experience. Students will earn credit for both classroom instruction and workplace participation, and ongoing collaboration and feedback with partners will be used to maintain the store as a high-quality learning environment.

District leaders submitted a detailed proposal to demonstrate how STEM instruction would be delivered, how partnerships would be sustained, and how student learning outcomes would be evaluated. The STEM BEST Program aims to strengthen school-industry connections across Iowa so students graduate with both academic knowledge and practical skills for college, careers, and entrepreneurship.

Local business participation is a key driver of the award’s impact. By embedding firms in curriculum design and offering teacher externships, the program creates a feedback loop between workforce needs and classroom learning. For a community like Storm Lake, where small employers and local services form the backbone of the economy, those ties can translate into clearer career pathways for high school graduates and a better-prepared entry-level labor pool for area employers.

Implementation will move from planning into practice as the district organizes externships, professional learning, and the student store’s operations. For residents, the award signals new opportunities for students to gain practical experience close to home and for businesses to shape the next generation of workers. The coming months will show how partnerships solidify and how classroom work converts into tangible skills and credentials that benefit both students and the community.