our passion

Program Awards & Highlights

Our Journey

Background

Founded in 2016, the Growing Hope Project was born as an idea by Brit Steele and Sherryl Anderson. This grew into a collaboration between San Bernardino City Unified School District, San Andreas High School, and Technical Employment Training Inc., which then blossomed into an inclusive Career Pathway, Workforce Development, and Business of Science & Technology Career Academy platform. 

Imagine a place that not only incubates creativity and love of learning, but also contributes to the environment and health of the individual. This place looks at our crucial building blocks for life—energy, water & carbon. The beauty of tracking these variables is that they exist in almost everything.

We take students and teachers to a place where they can engineer, tinker, monitor energy usage, exhibit projects, film, and produce multimedia for Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math (STEM). This platform provides a flexible framework in which schools and communities can discover, research, and develop how to convert skills and resources into programs that can help solve today’s challenges and become tomorrow’s solutions.

Growing Hope Project operates a 10,700 sq ft PrimusGFS Certified controlled environment greenhouse located on campus at San Andres High School (SAHS) and produces 60 different crops, including microgreens, herbs, and leafy greens. 

Education, production, and workforce development are its three primary functions. The AgTech Facility and accompanying teaching lab provide a STEM-based curriculum in high-tech urban agriculture for 1,200 K-14 students annually, including special needs students. GHP also delivers workforce development in K-14 Career Pathways; a high percentage of students participating in the pathway are special needs, homeless, working teens, foster youth, and teen parents; over 90% percent of these students are minorities, 36% of special needs, and collectively 98% receive free and reduced lunch through the NSLP.

• Spectrum News Coverage 

• WLC Architects Award for Classroom Design 

• Highland News Coverage 

• 2021 SB County Schools for Golden Bell Award for inclusion of Special Education Program in a Pathway

• ISTE Filming for CTE Standards 

• Demonstration Teacher Filming & Superintendent Demo 

• NextGen Symposium for School Modernization of SAHS Video Highlight 

• First Alternative High School for Gold Certified Linked Learning CTE Pathway 

• Highlight in Ed Tech Magazine 

• Awarded USDA Farm to School Grant for $99,865 September 2020 

• Awarded Innovation Grant for $48,516 to add additional growing capacity to the Lab 

• SAHS Received Model School Award over the past 6 years

• 1st in the nation for a K-12 School to receive a Global Food Safety Industry PRIMUS Certification