Students Recognized at BOE Meeting

We had the pleasure of recognizing some truly outstanding students at the March 20 Board of Education meeting.

MESMS FIRST Lego League Team

First up was the MESMS Legends. This remarkable team of students worked tirelessly to prepare for a FIRST Lego League competition held at Mildred E. Strang Middle School in January. Out of 12 teams from across the Hudson Valley, the Legends emerged as the first-place winners, thanks to their hard work, creativity, and ingenuity.

Their success didn't stop there. The Legends went on to compete at the regional level, where they once again impressed the judges and advanced to the next level of competition. We'd like to extend our congratulations to Coach Matt Ladka, who won the Outstanding Coach Award at both events. Coach Sheryl Goldberg also played an important role in working with the team.

The MESMS Legends team was founded in 2018 and is open to students from all middle school grade levels. Together, the students develop a robot that performs a variety of tasks. Additionally, they must create and present an innovative idea. The Legends' idea this year was particularly impressive — they came up with an insole that doubles as a cellphone charger. The concept theorizes that with each step, the insole could generate a small amount of electricity that could be used to charge a phone.

We are thrilled to recognize the following team members: Saarth Desai, Anthony Gade, Andrew James, Sameera Kavanal, Lilah Kelly, Maria Luce, Silvana Luce, Dhaya Ravi, Abhi Ravindranath, and Sidd Shenoy.

Regeneron Scholar

We were also proud to recognize Yorktown High School senior Raka Bose, whose AI technology earned her a spot as one of the top 300 scholars in the 2023 Regeneron Science Talent Search, a prestigious research competition for high school seniors.

Raka set out to develop a more efficient patient triage system that would reduce patient waiting time and ease the burden on health care workers. As a result, she developed a chatbot named Daisy, which has already experienced real-world success.

Raka’s bot was deployed in a hospital ICU, where the bot categorized COVID and long-COVID cases and suggested treatment options. Most patients who used Daisy spent just 11-15 minutes reporting their information, a 95 percent reduction.

Her science research project, which she began during her sophomore year, stood out among a pool of 1,949 applicants from hundreds of high schools across the nation. Raka’s project has also earned her an invitation to work with a group of scientists and doctors and the World Health Organization on its long-COVID research.

National Merit Scholarship Program

Finally, we celebrated Yorktown High School senior Spencer Kitts. He and Daniel Sheinin, who will be honored at a future meeting, were both named finalists in the 68th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. This program is open to high school juniors who take the 2021 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The semifinalists represent less than 1% of U.S. high school seniors, and about 95% of the semifinalists attain finalist standing. Approximately half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the title of Merit Scholar.