Phillips 66 Donates $1.7M To Expand Bartlesville Public Schools

Phillips 66 donated almost $2 million dollars Tuesday to expand Bartlesville Public Schools’ science, technology, engineering, and math labs.

The STEM education center will give high school students a cutting-edge experience without leaving the campus.

The timing of school construction helped make this possible. Thanks to a bond issue Bartlesville High School was already expanding, and now the old cafeteria at the high school will become a state of the art STEM lab.

A $20 million renovation is happening right now and if everything goes as planned Phase 1 of the STEM science lab will be available to freshmen this year.

Phase 2 includes a lab at Eastside Middle School and Phase 3 is a lab at Central Middle School. Both middle schools will have science labs for team teaching; Phillip 66 retirees will come and mentor students.

The physics teacher who wrote the grant, Granger Meador, said this will change the way kids learn and prepare local students to compete for jobs in science and technology.

“You are going to see some 3D printers and some of those kind of things that we see in STEM labs. We’re going to see computer technology, of course, that's utilized in various ways to analyze data, gather data and do some things like that and you’re gonna see some equipment that we just couldn't afford otherwise,” said Meador.

Phillips CEO, Greg Garland said, "As you think about our corporate giving philosophy, it’s around education, it’s around safety, it's around environmental issues; safety. So we want to make sure we are focusing our giving in those areas."

Phillips 66 employs about 2,000 people in Bartlesville. The CEO said he's investing in the company's future workforce.