Jacksonville, Fla. – Christ the King Catholic School in Jacksonville is the first school in the state to receive its STREAM accreditation.

STREAM, which stands for Science Technology Engineering, Religion, Arts, and Mathematics, is like the STEM program in public schools but includes religion and arts.

Principal Stephanie Engelhardt said Christ the King began building its STREAM program during the 2011-12 school year with focus groups for parents.

“We are so excited to be the first school in Florida to get the accreditation,” she said. “We’re very proud.”

The goal of the STREAM accreditation is to help students become more engaged in the subjects with an interdisciplinary approach that is more hands-on, she said.

The school added 30 minutes to its school day so it could increase the amount of time spent on the subjects.

The program also requires students to spend more time using technology. “In grades sixth through eighth, I put an iPad in every child’s hands,” Engelhardt said. In kindergarten through fifth grade, an iPad is available for every two students.

Each class has developed a project, many of which include an opportunity to learn about church teaching in such areas as the environment and social justice.

For instance, kindergarteners have planted a nectar garden for bees and butterflies that are now an official Monarch Way Station, she said. The fourth grade has a project with solar panels, and the sixth grade has been collecting data for the St. Johns Riverkeeper at nearby Strawberry Creek.

Seventh-graders are using vegetables from their salsa garden to can their own sauce. They also donate the produce they grow to L’Arche Harbor House, a nearby home for disabled adults.

The middle school was challenged to improve the lives of immigrant farm workers, Engelhardt said. And they have come up with all kinds of projects. One girl wrote a book contrasting the lives of a Caucasian girl and a Hispanic girl, the daughter of farm workers, who meet in school.

The sixth grade developed a pulley system to help farm workers lift 32-pound buckets of tomatoes into trucks.

Several classes raised money and collected clothes, diapers, cleaning products and other supplies to donate to the farm worker ministry in Plant City, Fla.

The eighth-grade class visited St. Clement Parish in Plant City. They met with farm workers and learned how food is harvested. The visit was documented on video so it can be shared with the whole school, Engelhardt said.

Over the summer, the school is turning one of its existing classrooms into an Engineering Lab. The lab will provide lessons and hands-on activities for students in five branches of engineering: mechanical, chemical, electrical, agricultural, and structural.

The STREAM accreditation is not the first honor for Christ the King School. The school was designated by the Department of Education as a National Blue Ribbon School, one of 312 in the country. It has about 250 students, who score in the top 10 percent in the nation in reading and math.

For more information about the school’s new Engineering Lab, call Deidre Hicks at (904) 724-0080, ext. 307.