BERNE — The Berne-Knox-Westerlo School District was recently awarded $8,000 through a grant from the New York Agricultural Education and Outreach project and Cornell University, according to a release from the district. The money will be used to fund the district’s agricultural science program, which was formed at the beginning of the school year.

“The timing couldn’t have been better with the new capital project underway,” Michaela Kehrer, the district’s agricultural science teacher and advisor for BKW’s Future Farmers of America chapter, said in the release. Kehrer said that the grant will fund new equipment and lab supplies for a new facility, a recently acquired High Tunnel greenhouse.

The greenhouse was purchased with another grant from the Albany County Soil and Water Conservation Service, which Kehrer’s students helped to obtain. The 960-square-foot facility was built last month.

At the last board of education meeting, students from the agricultural science program and BKW FFA chapter discussed the various activities they had participated in and the opportunities both programs had presented them with, such as job-shadowing and internships.

A Supervised Agricultural Experience program, for example, allows students to apply what they have learned in the classroom to situations like working on farm.

“The Ag program has provided leadership opportunities for students like me, and has brought additional elective courses that students are excited about taking,” said Amber Gebe, a sophomore at Berne-Knox-Westerlo Secondary School, in the release.

— H. Rose Schneider