The NASA App Development Team at Hayes has hit a massive roadblock. The news that the app development program will be shut down this year has dropped with a suddenness that has left the Hayes team shocked and confused.
The App Development Team at Hayes has worked on several different projects for NASA over the years.
“The App Development Challenge was an international competition that NASA did [and] each year was a little different,” said Joanne Meyer, head teacher of the App Development Team. In spite of the differences from year to year, the challenge always dealt with something regarding the Artemis II mission.
“These kids had a chance to interact with actual NASA scientists about the Artemis II mission and research coding,” said Tom Hering, an English teacher who went with the team to Houston last year.
Some students who joined the team weren’t initially very knowledgeable about coding and space. However, the program opened new doors for their education and interests.
But, as of recently, the program was shut down by the government, leaving the team here at Hayes confused and angry.
“It was disappointing since I’d planned on doing it for the whole four years,” said junior Isaac Highman, who participated on the team last year.
“Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ eliminated the department that does it,” Meyer said. “The office system engagement is NASA’s division or office that [provides] resources to educators and educational programs.”
With that bill, almost all outside learning opportunities hosted by NASA through OSTEM were immediately canceled.
“It looks like we are seeing an end to this for the next few years, unless people can make enough noise to say, ‘no, this matters,’” Hering said.
The team at Hayes has been participating in this program and its challenges for years now, so the cancellation of it has left the students and teachers devastated.
“We are all in mourning,” Meyer said. “That’s the best way to put it.”
“It’s just disappointing,” Highman said. “I am glad though, that we ended on a good note, [since] we won last year.”
Now, with the shut down of the program, the team is left without anything to do or work for.
“Now we are just like ‘what do we do?’” Hering said. “This [was] an opportunity that kids all over the world [needed].”
The NASA program was one of the very few coding challenges that was open to high school groups. Facing this loss, the team is left searching for something else to do.
So far, their search has come up empty.
“We’ve looked into it and there’s not many challenges we can do outside the school,” Highman said. “We are probably not going to do anything else besides in class.”
However, Meyer said she wants to stay optimistic and confident in a future for the team.
“I’m working on it,” Meyer said. “We’re going to do something, we just need to find it.”
Despite there not being a definitive plan for the future of this Hayes team, the team still holds onto hope that they can find something else to put their skills and knowledge toward.
