How Iredell-Statesville Schools Built a $0-Cost STEM Trailer for 2,000+ Students a Year, Using Betabox as the Blueprint

The Challenge

Tim Woody, the district's CTE Director, asked STEM Coordinator Debra Lester to build a district STEM trailer. The assignment was easy to describe. Carrying it out was another matter. How should the trailer be set up? What should it offer? And how would a class of 30 fit through a space that holds about 15?

Debra started by looking at what other counties and states had done with STEM and STEAM trailers. She ran into the same problem every time. To watch one in action, she had to pay for it to come to her district or pay to travel and see it. That left her guessing about the day-to-day details: scheduling, staffing, equipment, and how students move in and out.

Two practical problems sat on top of that. The first was money. A trailer stocked with technology that local employers actually use is expensive, and the district had no budget line for it. The second was people. Whatever lab the district built would be run by the adults on hand that day, whether teachers, aides or volunteers, rather than robotics or laser-cutting specialists. Without a tested model, nobody knew if that would work.

The Solution

Carol Moore at STEM West put Debra in touch with Betabox. When a Betabox lab pulled up at an ISS school, Debra knew right away what she was looking at: "Oh my gosh, this is basically a STEM trailer. This is what, you know, essentially we are trying to accomplish." Here, finally, was a working lab with students inside it.

Betabox first visited ISS middle schools in spring 2024 and came back the following year. Debra used each visit as a blueprint. She watched how the visits were scheduled, how long the lab stayed, what equipment it carried, and which grade levels did best with which activities.

The most useful thing she learned fixed the district's biggest logistics problem. Run two projects at the same time, with a second adult leading one of them, then swap the groups. That second adult does not have to be a specialist. With this setup a class of 30 can work through a space built for 15. Staff without technical training can run a station, because, as Debra put it, the students are the ones doing the work.

Next came funding. Local business and industry partners in an education-workforce cohort crowdfunded the trailer itself. Debra then won a North Carolina Digital Learning Initiative grant of almost $300,000 to equip it. She tied every purchase to Iredell County's largest and fastest-growing industries, so the trailer reflects the jobs in the region instead of a generic list of STEM gadgets.

The equipment covers five career paths:

Advanced manufacturing: Glowforge laser cutters, CNC cutters and large 3D printers

Aviation: flight simulators, drones, and apps for flight and rocket design

Health science: ECG devices and Foldscope microscopes

Veterinary science: stethoscopes and simulated animals

IT and coding: Sphero BOLT+ robots

Teachers anywhere in the district can book a rotation or bring the trailer into a project they are already teaching.

Debra also joined Betabox's Educator Advisory Board and now gives feedback on CareerStack™ as a design partner. The whole build, from the first Betabox visit in spring 2024 to a fully equipped trailer getting ready to launch in fall 2026, took about two school years.

The Results

The trailer will cost ISS $0 to launch. Crowdfunding from industry partners bought the trailer, and a North Carolina Digital Learning Initiative grant of nearly $300,000 paid for the equipment. After it launches in fall 2026, it is designed to serve every 7th grader in the district, more than 2,000 students a year, and the district plans to take it to more than 25 schools.

"We're proud of it because it's cost our district $0," Debra said.

The money matters, but the district also gained something it could not have bought. ISS now has a hands-on career exploration model that its own staff can run, without hiring a specialist for each station. "Someone who is not trained on, you know, a specific type of bot or activity or whatever can still take a facilitator role because the students are doing the work," Debra explained. She took that lesson straight from watching Betabox labs, and it now guides how ISS will staff its trailer across the district.

The partnerships have also lasted. The local businesses that paid for the trailer now tell educators where new hires tend to struggle, and teachers use that to build durable skills into trailer activities. Design students in the district are helping wrap the trailer's interior. Debra's work now reaches past her own district, too. As a member of Betabox's Educator Advisory Board, she helps shape CareerStack™, bringing what ISS has learned to a tool other districts will use.

Conclusion

The ISS trailer is scheduled to launch in fall 2026. The relationship with Betabox will continue after that. Debra's trailer doesn't replace Betabox. It grows the district's own capacity, and the partnership keeps going. Through the Educator Advisory Board and CareerStack™, Debra stays close to the company whose lab gave her a model to work from, and she keeps learning from what it builds next.