Middle School Outreach Program

The Watershed Protection group of the City of Palo Alto is seeking a contractor to provide free science lessons for middle school students.

Watershed Protection partners with the Regional Water Quality Control Plant to provide lessons to elementary and middle schools in six communities that the wastewater treatment plant serves. Historically, we have reached approximately 3,800 students. We partner with the Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo to provide lessons for elementary students. This project is seeking a contractor to manage and deliver the middle school outreach program, which will reach approximately 2,000 students.

The contractor will deliver a middle school lesson that utilizes microscopes called, Microbes in Sewage. The curriculum is fully developed and has run in classrooms for 25+ years. The program has been paused for a couple of years, and the selected contractor will relaunch it for school year 2025-26.

The Regional Water Quality Control Plant (RWQCP) is owned and operated by the City of Palo Alto or CITY to provide wastewater treatment for East Palo Alto Sanitary District, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Stanford. The School Outreach Programs satisfy the CITY’s stormwater and wastewater discharge permit requirements to provide outreach to school-age children about the importance of reducing or eliminating pollutants entering the sanitary sewer and storm drain systems. They also help the CITY achieve its long-term goals of water pollution prevention by educating youth and inspiring environmental stewardship.

The School Outreach Programs are managed by the CITY’s Watershed Protection group and include both elementary and middle school lessons. Elementary school programs are delivered by the Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo. The CITY is seeking a third-party contractor or CONSULTANT to deliver the RWQCP Middle School Outreach Program, which was established in 2000.

The CONSULTANT will provide in-class school lessons in the RWQCP service area along with marketing, scheduling, tracking, evaluation, and reporting to ensure the success of the program. This program currently provides one seventh-grade program, called Microbes in Sewage. This hands-on microscope lab teaches about the wastewater treatment process and protecting the San Francisco Bay through pollution prevention. For an overview of the treatment process at the RWQCP, view this wastewater treatment video .

Prior to the Covid pandemic, the Middle School Outreach Program served approximately 76 classrooms and 2,100 students. During online learning in School Year 2020-21, the lesson was offered virtually and served less than half as many students. The program has been paused since 2021. The popular program historically received a consistent rating of 4.8 out of 5 for content and quality of teachers. Middle school educators have expressed strong interest in this program, so it is expected to hit target lesson numbers.

The CITY seeks a CONSULTANT who has experience in hands-on, science education in school classrooms and a working knowledge of watersheds, local ecosystems, and pollution prevention topics. The CONSULTANT should be conversant with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and ensure that the lessons continue to be aligned with the latest standards. The CONSULTANT should have strong experience with classroom management. The lesson Microbes in Sewage (see Appendix A – Curriculum) will require two staff alongside the classroom teacher to be sure students are following safety protocols and to assist with slide preparation, identification of microorganisms, and proper clean-up.