TAMPA, Fla. — Students from Stewart Middle Magnet School are on their way to Tallahassee to participate in Florida Space Day on Thursday, an opportunity for them to meet with legislators to talk about the importance of school choice in Florida.

Florida Space Day happens one day after the Rally for School Choice, happening on Thursday, which attracts magnet schools from across the state.


What You Need To Know


A half-dozen students in Stewart Middle Magnet Schools John Glenn Top Gun Academy will be talking to legislators about their education focusing on space, aeronautics, engineering and robotics.

“I’ve always been interested in space, so I was like, there is a school that is dedicated to space? Of course I'm going to go there,” said eighth grader Emery Wynne.

“The stem program at the school has been very important, like the engineering classes and the robotics classes that I take, I've learned so much,” said eighth grader Vidyarth Sathya.

“We learn about a lot of space related stuff and we also learn about aeronautics, about how planes work and about how all the gauges work and proper landing and everything,” said eighth grader Gabriel Santos.

Practicing on a flight simulator is exactly what students were doing when Spectrum Bay News 9 visited the school this week to talk about students trip to Tallahassee.

Program lead Lynn McDaniel, a retired teacher, says the trip to the state capital is all about getting legislators attention so more resources can be dedicated to school choice.

“The students have these darling blue NASA jump suits, and so when they walk in to the legislators office, we did this a couple years ago, they don't want to talk to their team leader which is an aerospace representative, like from Lockheed Martin or something. So then, they want to talk to the students in the jump suits and get the student perspective,” said McDaniel.

And that’s what the Rally for School Choice is all about.

Stewart Middle Magnet Students will be on the road today and informally meet tonight.

Students will then do their official visits with legislators during Florida Space Day Thursday.