Author: Hometown Stations
Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Bob Cupp, visits an ODA afterschool program at Lima West Middle School.
Speaker Bob Cupp visited West Middle School on Friday to talk with 8th-grade students and school officials about their after-school program.
This is the second year for the program which is a partnership with The Open Doors Academy in Cleveland. Cupp suggested the after-school program to the Lima school after learning about it during a state budget hearing. West is just one of five schools statewide to use this program, which gives students additional help with their school work but also offers enrichment activities
“Which range from solar pizza boxes to GROB industries coming in making models and working with hydraulics and things like that, to everything in between,” says T.J. Winkler, Principal West Middle School. “To healthy living, plants, doing gardening to those type of things. We are trying to expand the whole student mind and body. So they have a healthy life as they move on until high school.”
There are 25 West Middle School students who are signed up and looking to get a lot out of the after-school program this year.
“There are three ways that we hear that they make a difference,” says Dorothy Moulthrop, CEO Open Doors Academy. “One they get exposed with opportunities they otherwise might not have. Which helps them figure out what they want to do in life and sometimes what they don’t want to do in life. They also make great friends in these programs and they have the presence of a loving caring adult who mentors them and roots for them and makes them believe that they really can do anything.”
