A little more than $1 million in federal funding that Congress approved this March will go toward creating Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math hubs across Virginia — but the effort that got the Commonwealth there came from an educator in the Shenandoah Valley’s backyard.

Amy Sabarre, the Harrisonburg City Public Schools STEM director and the president of the Virginia STEM Education Advisory Board, helped secure that $1,028,000 for STEM education, an accomplishment that took the teacher 10 years of persistence.

“I cried [when I found out],” Sabarre said. “This has been something that I think would be so beneficial to students around the state and our economy, and I can’t wait to see what happens. It gives me chills even now talking about it.”

Sabarre had her first STEM network meeting in 2014 at James Madison University. She was inspired after visiting Ohio’s STEM learning network a few years earlier and seeing its impact on K-12 education.

“We worked for a couple years, and we just didn't have the support at the time from the legislature or the governor’s office to really make it happen,” Sabarre said. “We have operated with no funding for a long time, and doing this out of passion trying to get this working.”

Sabarre first served on the Virginia STEM Commission and later became the president of the governor’s STEM Advisory Board. After learning about applications for congressionally directed funding requests from the offices of Sen. Mark Warner and Sen. Tim Kaine last year, the board voted to apply.

“It was very competitive,” Sabarre said. “There were over 150 other state requests from the state of Virginia for that funding, and it was a larger amount of funding than most appropriations requests. So we were lucky to get chosen.”

While their request made it through Congress, it was stalled after disagreements over the federal budget. Finally, it passed alongside the federal budget at the end of March. Sabarre’s birthday was that weekend, and the funding finally going through was “the best birthday present a girl could’ve asked for.”

There’s still some time before the funding gets to the Virginia Department of Education, but the money will be used to create a statewide STEM network through regional hubs.

“The idea is that we are sharing resources, we are sharing expertise, we’re sharing professional development for teachers to be able to ensure that students have a rigorous educational experience,” Sabarree said. “So it’s, it’s multifaceted, in that the idea is that we build on each other’s strengths, and we learn from each other.”

The $1 million will create new full-time positions, fund start-up needs, and provide grants for regional hubs in the statewide network. Sabarre said the funding should last the organization about a year, after which the board and new executive director will need to find more funds to keep it running for years to come.

The Virginia STEM Education Advisory Board will meet on April 26 in Richmond to discuss the application process and maps for regional hubs. Sabarre said it would be a big deal if they can create three regional hubs in the first year, but ideally, the goal is to ultimately have eight or nine.

Sabarre said she wasn’t the only one helping to secure the funding. She worked alongside her “passionate and hardworking” board members. and she thanked Warner, Kaine and the Secretary of Education for supporting STEM education.

“In order to do STEM education, you have to have teachers who understand what it means and have the necessary content knowledge and skills to make it happen,” Sabarre said. “That doesn’t happen by accident. It takes funding and it takes support and time. So to be able to leverage that … is going to be really important in order to really get to those students who are not having the same experiences that our students in Harrisonburg are having.”