The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center – the Met School – recently received a $10,000 award from the Verizon Foundation. The award was presented at a ceremony held at the Providence Performing Arts Center with all 750 students and 140 staff members present.

“Verizon offered to be a part of increasing our students’ knowledge of computer programs,” said Diane Postoian, the Met’s Learning Through Interests partnership coordinator.

A team of students including Esther Ciing, Zoe Anderson, Natalie Munoz, Wesly Jennings, Eric Perez, Sheldon Allen, Anthony Moore and Jesus Matos, sought to devise a new program with a focus on HTML coding. The computer programs class was planned with Arnold Coleman, international coordinator for Verizon’s IT community outreach program, and taught by volunteer Abraham Pinales, who is a network engineer at the company.

Pinales worked with students from February to April, and students’ interest and involvement kept a 95 percent ratio of perfect attendance.

“There has been such strong interest from students that we wanted to work on the expansion of the program,” said Postoian. “Verizon has made the commitment to our students both in volunteer time and now in funding support to make program expansion a reality.” •