North Harlem Elementary students build, race green-powered cars

HARLEM, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - A group of students from north Harlem elementary have designed, built, and even raced their green-powered cars.

They went to a huge competition in Alabama against 32 teams and came out on top. We stopped by their school to learn how they did it.

“It takes a lot of teamwork,” said Bella Scruggs, a fifth grader.

Scruggs and Karly Thacker have worked on these cars all year.

“When I was building the car, it was a little tricky because of each of the pieces, the nuts, and bolts, but it was fun,” said Scruggs.

Sixteen fourth and fifth graders design and build the cars from scratch.

Kimberly Spicer is the STEM teacher. She said, “I’m just really proud of these kids, they worked really hard, and it shows a great deal of responsibility for them. They have to stay after school when they’ve been at school all day long. They’re here until 5:30, and they’re working nonstop.”

A few times a year, Spicer takes her team to the track. In their biggest race of the year, North Harlem put up the fastest time.

“Then they said first place North Harlem Elementary, and I jumped about five feet up into the air, and we were screaming. I didn’t know what was going on, but then we go up, and we get our picture. We get our banner and everything, so we were all pretty excited and shocked,” she said.

Scruggs said: “Everybody at school that saw us wearing our green-power shirts. They were all like congratulations and everything, and it was really fun.”

For these kids, all the time they put in to create the best car possible paid off.

“That made me feel really happy because we worked really hard on that,” she said.

Spicer says this is their first win in years, and it happened in their final race of the season.

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