“For the students in NNB, this was a massive research project,” Motta said.
“They learned a lot of investigative tools.
We had groups just looking at the history of housing developments in St. Petersburg to see which houses would be the best targets for our experiment.” NNB covers the historic African-American neighborhoods of St. Petersburg’s midtown area.
One of its major projects includes Midtown K-12 news – a program seeking to improve journalism and media education in schools in south St. Petersburg.
The Academy Prep Center of St. Petersburg is one of those schools.
Students who were interested in participating in the experiment could sign up for it through an after-school enrichment program called “Community Cares.” But before they could begin collecting water samples, students were required to research the harmful effects of lead in drinking water.
“They really got to experience science firsthand,” Manke said.
“I run samples all the time, so that wasn’t special or overly interesting for me, but the fact that students were involved – and not just college-level students, but middle schools kids that collected the samples and came and saw my lab – it’s always great to have kids come and see the lab and hopefully be excited about science.” Quinn found that lead was present in the water but at levels well below the EPA limit, which is set at 15 parts per billion.
“I always believe that when you’re a reporter, it doesn’t end when you finish the story,” she said.
I just hope that NNB has that figurative, fat notebook,” Perez said.