ADAMS TWP — A new store at Mars High School is being called an innovative means of learning for its employees.

Principal Lindsay Rosswog told the school board members at their Tuesday night meeting that 10 life skills and special education members are selling school merchandise from a cart they take to study halls and lunch periods and in a small room between two classrooms.

Rosswog said the project is the creation of life skills teacher Samantha Flanhofer, who oversees the program.

The students sell Mars T-shirts, hoodies, backpacks, pencils, pens, notebooks and other spirit “merch.”

She said each student had to go through two rounds of interviews to be “hired” to work at the store. The interviews also determined job assignments.

Rosswog said the students partnered with various classes and school clubs to create the gear and clothing.

They made a commercial with the broadcast media class in which they posed wearing the clothes and using the merchandise.

The students also worked with a marketing class to determine what students would buy and how to market it.

Rosswog said about 40 students from the classes and clubs collaborated with the life skills and special education students.

“It’s been a good experience for the students,” Rosswog said.

She said the interview process and working at the store gives the students experience they can use in their adult lives.

She said the school population is gradually warming to the store.

“It started small, but it’s gaining momentum,” Rosswog said.

School board member William Pettigrew, who is the president of the Mars Planet Foundation, said the foundation made a grant to Flanhofer to start up the store.

Rosswog said the store has real and tangible benefits for the students working there.

“For the life skills students, the program has provided a practical application of the skills they are learning in the classrooms,” Rosswog said. “They see what having a job would entail and they can prepare for that.”