ADAMS TWP — Four businesses have donated $15,000 to the Mars School District for the new robotics program at the middle school.

Chestnut Hill Dental presented the school board Tuesday night with a check for $5,000, and board President Dayle Ferguson said Aesynt in Warrendale also donated $5,000 in April.

Mars National Bank gave $2,000, and Sigma Resources donated $3,000 for the program.

“Many of our local businesses want to support (science, technology, engineering and math) education,” Ferguson said, “and we are very fortunate to have the community support to help expand STEM at an earlier grade level.”

The new middle school program will have all seventh- and eighth-graders spend nine weeks each in programming 101 and programming 102 classes, where they will work with robotics kits from a company at Carnegie Mellon University.

Matt Friedman, assistant superintendent for secondary education, explained in June that the students will build simple robotics tools that can operate in different ways.

The program also will allow for more interface with the laptop computers issued to each middle school student, and will help prepare students for the robotics programs at the high school.