After the success of Prince William County’s award winning education program, From the Mountains to the Estuary: From the Schoolyards to the Bay, PEREC partnered with Fairfax County Public Schools to create a similar program Through generous NOAA BWET funding, Spatially Connecting Kids to the Bay was developed. This program, conducted along waterways in local parks, has directly reached over 50,000 seventh graders
Spatially Connecting Kids to the Bay brings middle school students to local watersheds and gives them authentic field experience, during which they collect and identify macroinvertebrates, predict and assess water chemistry parameters, such as nitrate phosphate turbidity pH dissolved O2. The overarching goal is to give students the opportunity to determine, based on data they collected themselves, whether or not their local watershed is healthy, and to determine what they could do in their own lives to enhance it.