Brookside Middle Robotics Team Earns State, World Awards

SARASOTA, FL - From Sarasota County Schools: The National Technology Student Association has named the Brookside Middle School chapter the number one TSA chapter in Florida. The chapter, which sponsors competitive robotics teams, also received the Chapter Excellence Award. Its faculty advisor, Joel Kaplan, was honored as the TSA Advisor of the Year.

The awards were given during the National TSA Conference, held June 21-25 in Orlando. The Advisor of the Year award is based on student nominations.

It has been a banner year for Brookside Middle School’s Technology Student Association. In addition to the number one state ranking for one team, another group of Brookside students celebrated a ranking of number 25 in the world for middle school robotics skills at the VEX Robotics Competition in Louisville, Ky., in April.

“I’ve been extremely fortunate to have such great teams of students in our TSA program this year, and I’m so proud of their accomplishments,” said Kaplan. “It has been a great honor and pleasure to be the advisor for such a dedicated team of hardworking students. To our knowledge, this is the first year a school has earned this number of distinctions in the same year, and we are very excited to see what our students continue to achieve.”

Brookside Middle School is located at 3636 S. Shade Ave., Sarasota.

Image via Sarasota County Schools