Amazon to donate $1.75M for equipment at upcoming Syracuse STEAM school

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) will be donating $1.75 million for robotics and computer-science technology improvements at the upcoming Syracuse STEAM school.

STEAM is short for science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. The STEAM school will be housed at the downtown building that was previously home to Central High School. Known as the Greystone building, it was last used as a school in 1976.

Amazon — the Seattle, Washington–based e-commerce giant — is building a fulfillment center in the town of Clay and a second smaller facility in the town of DeWitt.

Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon announced the funding on Tuesday afternoon at the Oncenter.

McMahon noted that Amazon is developing more than 4 million square feet of workspace in Onondaga County combined, between the Clay location and the smaller facility upcoming in DeWitt.

“When we were courting Amazon to come here and [saying] why they should be here … we talked about the relationships in this community … and we talked about the STEAM school and we talked about how unique of a project this was, a project that you would have a county-wide reach to all of our kids focused on the curriculum of tomorrow,” McMahon said in his remarks. “That was a big selling point for them.”

The STEAM school is part of the Syracuse SURGE, a strategy developed by the administration of Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh for “inclusive growth in the new economy.”

“We have jobs being created by companies like Amazon that increasingly require a different skill set than we’re used to teaching in schools or in the trades,” Walsh said in his remarks. “We have to modify our approach to make sure that we’re preparing people in our community, particularly young people, for the jobs of the new economy and that’s what the STEAM school is all about.”