Twelfth-graders Maggie Gaunt and A.J. Datto, students in the Student Organization of Aquatic Robotics program at Dollar Bay-Tamarack City High School, show a device to State Superintendent Michael Rice during his visit to the school Tuesday. (Houghton Daily Mining Gazette photo by Garrett Neese)

DOLLAR BAY — Tuesday, the superintendent became the student.

Michael Rice, Michigan’s superintendent of education, toured schools across the Copper Country. He said his goal was to learn how to better partner with schools to serve children. Schools, no matter how small or rural, should be able to provide children with opportunities to pursue their interests, in his opinion.

“If we’re really going to be fair in what we do, we want to offer the fullest set of opportunities for the widest range of children — irrespective of where they’re born, where they grow up, who their parents are …” he said. “I travel to learn. If I had all the answers, I’d stay in Lansing.”

Rice stopped in Stanton Township, the Career and Technical Education center at the Copper Country Intermediate School District, Hancock and Calumet before visiting the Student Organization of Aquatic Robotics program in Dollar Bay Tuesday afternoon.

One of the most pressing problems statewide is a teacher shortage, which Rice said is more acute in rural areas and places without obvious feeder systems such as nearby colleges with education majors.

“It’s been a problem for a period of time that’s become exacerbated,” he said.

Another problem is expanding the Great Start Readiness Program to serve more four-year-olds statewide. Another goal is improving health, safety and wellness for students, including mental as well as physical health. The state legislature recently approved $240 million for helping professions such as social workers, nurses, counselors and school psychologists.

“The challenge is to develop those professions, because we don’t have a lot of people unemployed waiting to work in those fields,” Rice said.

Statewide, Rice also hopes to expand CTE programs and more students who become “course completers.”

“It’s not just a course or two, it’s the full breadth in any given area,” he said.

Tuesday afternoon, Dollar Bay seniors Maggie Gaunt and A.J. Datto showed him some of the projects students are working on. SOAR functions as a non-profit business enterprise. The “veterans” — students past their first trimester — were working on miniature remote-operated vehicles to demonstrate to younger children to interest them in marine robotics. Datto is also working on a computer numerical control mill so they can make circuit boards rather than breadboards with wires.

SOAR’s robots have been used by outside clients such as Isle Royale National Park, which uses them to scan vessels for invasive zebra mussels. With the program’s first models now six years old, Gaunt was making new models.

“They’re smaller, and they’re more compact, so we could also use them for mines that have water,” she said.

Students are also working on a chamber to test algae for phosphorus for a client in Wisconsin trying to figure out why their ponds are green.

“We’re the only people that make them, because not everyone wants to deal with having to waterproof things that will last for a month,” Gaunt said.

SOAR has about 23 students, including 14 new members. Current members have been talking up the program to younger students, Gaunt said. And a change in schedule also allows students to take SOAR and band at the same time.

Students were excited to meet Rice.

“It’s a little nerve-wracking, but it should be a good thing to show him around the enterpriser and show him what we do,” Datto said.

Rice said the children he talked to Tuesday inspired him. For one thing, they had bigger vocabularies than him, he said. And he recognized the excited hum of ideas in the Dollar Bay classroom — what he called “good chatter.”

“When you’re excited about something, you dig into it, and you really learn an enormous amount,” he said. “When you’re just going through the paces, you don’t try to absorb much of anything.”