A gentle buzz zips through Pearsall Park’s sunbathed sky during a late July morning.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Maybe the scratch of roller-skates at Pearsall’s freewheel bike park? No, it’s Liam Nerio, 17, flying a drone to capture 3D imaging of the park’s features.
Liam is one of six students from CAST STEM High School who used their summer break to intern as drone pilots, collecting geographical data on the public parks and parts of San Antonio’s Southwest Side under the careful watch of drone instructor Cerina Martinez-Zamora.
It’s the first time these CAST STEM students take part of an internship.
“I’ve flown drones since I was like a kid… but I didn’t know like all the regulations and stuff and all that until I took Mrs. Zamora’s class,” Liam recalled. ” …guess that kind of like made me passionate about it. So, I think it’s cool. I think walkability is cool. So, when you put the two together, it’s like super cool.”
Combining drone operations with geographic information services mapping, the 10-week internship program is the brainchild of the Dee Howard Foundation, an aerospace workforce development group, and former District 4 Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia, now president and CEO of the Center for Health Empowerment in South Texas (CHEST).
The program garnered financial support from Workforce Solutions Alamo to cover $3,000 for every student, and other groups like the 80|20 Foundation and Amazon covered equipment, instruction and technology-connected learning tools.
And the program was especially crafted with CAST STEM students in mind since the school has offered a remote pilot certification for the past three years with help from the Dee Howard Foundation, which is behind a larger push to introduce students to drone pilot careers in Bexar County.
Drone pilot careers have an untapped potential, said Christopher Mammen, executive director of Dee Howard.
“This project — we wanted to introduce mapping as a new tool for these students,” he said. “It’s really building an aptitude for the technologies in the uses of artificial intelligence or cyber security or agriculture.”
What does a drone pilot do?
Getting a drone pilot license is no walk in the park.
“There are a lot of regulations that a lot of people don’t understand or don’t know,” said Martinez-Zamora. “You have to get certain authorizations, you have to check your airspace, you have to check for temporary flight restrictions.”
Certified drone pilots must be at least 16 years old and pass an initial 60-question aeronautical knowledge exam in an approved flying site.
The first semester of Martinez-Zamora’s class is just trying to get students prepared for the exam, memorizing rules, safety guidelines and how to actually operate the drone.
Beyond a year-long drone pilot class, CAST STEM doesn’t offer more advanced coursework where students can build on their initial drone pilot certifications.
But Martinez-Zamora knew her students were ready for a bigger challenge, and when the Dee Howard Foundation approached her with the internship, she handpicked Liam, Mason Withers, Isaac Cerda, Lana Jimenez, Destien Terrazas and Jackson Piatnek, all between 16 and 17 years old, for the job.
For the first few days of the program the six students and instructor camped out in the library of McAuliffe Middle School to find their flow. They designating roles, worked out the kinks in glitchy softwares and researched what terms like “walkability” meant and how it could be measured with 3D images.
“They’ll dive into it… It’s a lot of like reading and learning, and so it gets tedious,” said Martinez-Zamora on June 9. “They’re learning so much new stuff.”
That day, the team all huddled around computer screens, playing trial and error with tricky software programs to make sure their drone images came out clear and smooth.
They had already mapped the middle school building that served as their headquarters for the summer. They had also visited public parks in San Antonio to get a feel for what they would be capturing and practiced taking high-speed images on themselves as well.
By then, the team had also loosely divided roles.
Liam, Mason and Isaac took turns piloting the drones. Lana took on the role of recorder and journalist, capturing what she saw out in the field. Destien and Jackson were on equipment, ready to troubleshoot if something went wrong with the drone or other technology.
In reality, they all did a little bit of everything, said Jackson.
“I feel like we don’t just let one person do everything or one particular thing,” he said.
By July 21, the CAST STEM pilots operated as a well-oiled machine.
Outfitted in bright yellow vests with the words “FAA Licensed Commercial Drone Pilot” on the back, the team of six took on one of their last visits to Pearsall Park off Old Pearsall Road and SW Military Drive.
At that point, the team had already captured much of the public infrastructure on the city’s Southwest Side, noting the existence (or lack thereof) of shaded bus stops, measuring walkability, accessibility and safety. They’d visited Pearsall Park several times, getting special permissions since the air space over the park borders Lackland Air Force Base.
But they wanted to retake images of the park’s freewheel bike track to capture more of the divots and texture.
By then they had also presented some of their initial findings to District 4 Councilman Edward Mungia, whose district includes Pearsall Park.
Students talked with Mungia about the park’s features, noting a damaged zip line and damaged signage, pollution and a lack of sidewalks to make the park easily accessible to residents in the area.
“The 3D mapping really helps us,” Isaac said while looking up to the sky, never taking his eyes off the black drone.
Nearby, Mason operated the drone with a remote control, troubleshooting the early morning heat, wind and the device’s altitude, all factors that can affect flying.
The team also gathered qualitative data, surveying park goers on their experience of the park to include with their findings. Students were surprised to find that several Pearsall Park visitors were from all over San Antonio, but few were from District 4.
Based on the surveys, it feels like it’s hard for local residents to even get to the park, said Lana. “Like it’s close, but it’s hard to get here.”
Documenting health inequities
That day in Pearsall Park, the team also wore T-shirts with the CHEST logo — a quiet reminder of the internship’s broader goal of documenting some the South Side’s longstanding health inequities.
CHEST uses social determinants of health like walkability and shade structures to think of solutions to the health issues that disproportionately affect residents south of U.S Highway 90 in Texas, where life expectancies drop significantly compared to other parts of town and diabetic amputation rates are significantly higher.
Rocha Garcia, who currently leads CHEST, said simple improvements to public infrastructure could help solve some of the inequity, but it’s necessary for local leaders to actually see where the issues lie.
“It’s not until you’re literally here that you get it, like it snaps, and you’re able to see what we’ve been talking about for a long time,” she said, referring to historic redlining and underinvestment in San Antonio’s Southside communities. “There’s access, but not equal access.”
Part of CHEST’s strategy to improve health outcomes is also to boost educational attainment and exposure to health careers that students may not have known even existed. That’s where the CAST STEM students came in, documenting green spaces and making connections between their findings and the area’s overall quality of life.
The team’s summer project isn’t over just because they’re going back to school, some to finish high school, others to start college. They plan on presenting their 3D imaging maps with local officials from the City of San Antonio and Bexar County.
During the internship, the students also built geocaches, small containers used in real-world outdoor treasure hunting games, to place around Pearsall Park.
“As the school year goes, we’re going to be checking in on them to see how you know if it’s brought new people to the the to the park and hopefully they’ll be able to get a survey in the inside,” said Martinez-Zamora, who was also able to secure more sponsors for a new drone and a free year-long subscription to DroneDeploy, a high-end software that converts drone imaging into 3D maps.
At some point in the fall, the CAST STEM team will also be presenting to a Workforce Solutions Alamo board committee to share what their first internship experience was like.
During that July 21 visit to Pearsall Park, only a few weeks from finishing the internship, the team agreed that the summer had already been a transformative one.
For Liam, having to try different software and pivot proved an ability to grow and learn on the fly. “You realize how easy it is to pick up something if you really try,” he said.
On his end, Isaac felt like he was getting better at presenting and speaking confidently. His teammates hummed in agreement.
“I don’t know about everyone else, but like I’ve had a bunch of fun,” said Jackson. “When we have like days off, I just wanted to come back to work.”
