IN Moon Township Winter 2018 | Page 8

WHAT’S NEWS IN MOON TOWNSHIP MAHS RECEIVES $5,000 GRANT TO START AQUAPONIC FARM Moon Area High School was recently awarded a $5,000 grant from the National Education Association Foundation to start an aquaponic farm. The purpose of the grant is to allow Invention Lab students to design, manufacture, and maintain the aqua pond and then for the Life Skills students to develop work skills by growing produce and fish. The aqua pond will also be available to the science teachers to develop lessons for hands-on learning opportunities. High school teachers James Petrina, Kate Robson, Sarah Knaus, and Diane Corsi will oversee the aqua farm initiative. DISTRICT TEACHERS REPRESENT MOON AREA AT NATIONAL AUTISM CONFERENCE Moon Area School District teachers Maureen Archer, Meghan Foust, Katelyn Schulmeister, and Sarah Knaus had the opportunity to represent the district at the 2018 National Autism Conference held at Penn State University August 6-9. The National Autism Conference aims to bring together educators and families to further cultivate curriculum that best serves students across the spectrum. Moon Area School District is one of the few districts to offer a K-12 Verbal Behavior program. Verbal Behavior is a method of teaching that uses the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis and focuses on the idea that a meaning 6 724.942.0940 TO ADVERTISE ❘ of a word is found in its function. This initiative was started in the district to provide research-based programming to students with disabilities. The teachers were approached by their Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network consultants to present on how they collaborate together to design and implement a K-12 model using Verbal Behavior techniques and procedures, especially targeting the area of manding. Manding focuses on teaching how to make requests and to help understand that communication produces positive results and is driven by motivation. “It is a distinguished and rare honor for our Special Education Department to be selected as a model K-12 Verbal Behavior program during this national conference,” said Michael Haslett, MASD Director of Pupil Services. “Our teachers work collaboratively to ensure that each student has the tools they need to continue developing their communication skills from kindergarten to graduation.” WESTERN PA DATA CENTER AND ALLEGHENY LAND TRUST COLLABORATE TO BUILD REGIONAL TOOL Allegheny Land Trust and the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center have just launched Urban Greenprint, an interactive online regional mapping tool that will guide urban greening priorities. Urban Greenprint features a number of land use data sets from public-sector, nonprofit and private organizations and makes them available for public use at tools.wprdc.org/urban-greenprint. “The tool is an intersectional analysis of the status of all Pittsburgh-area land parcels that is equally accessible to all organizations and individuals,” ALT community conservation director Alyson Fearon said. “It offers opportunities for public engagement and self-education icmags.com that we hope empowers residents working on land use challenges to take action in protecting their community green spaces.” Users of Urban Greenprint can view environmental data on a map and interact with regularly updated information about properties in Allegheny County. It is powered by the regional data sharing infrastructure provided by the WPRDC. In addition to developing and hosting the tool, data featured in Urban Greenprint is also available as open data on the WPRDC website. “The convergence of strong economic, social, cultural and environmental factors presents the Pittsburgh region with a transformational land use management opportunity that is unparalleled in recent times,” Fearon said. “Local economic expansion is spurring development in parts of the city and county, benefiting many residents while potentially leaving others behind. Visionary, community- supported land use decisions will be needed to best address these issues and maximize opportunities for all the region’s residents.” ALT hopes Urban Greenprint empowers residents to make their communities more resilient by addressing apparent opportunities to affect community and environmental issues including recreation opportunity, neighborhood revitalization, urban greenspace preservation, urban gardening/farming, and remediation of issues like flooding, combined sewer overflow, landslides and air quality. The map helps to outline where opportunities to preserve environmentally sensitive and important properties are greatest. Some ways individuals could make use of this data are by utilizing it to reach out to individuals whose properties are suitable for use as green infrastructure, to identify opportunities to turn vacant land into community gardens or other neighborhood assets, or spark a discussion about risks in developing flood- or landslide-prone properties.