[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 99 (Thursday, June 14, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H5159-H5160]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   LUNCH BUDDY APP BUILDS FRIENDSHIPS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Smith) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and 
congratulate four exceptional students from New Jersey's Point Pleasant 
Borough High School--Luke Boylan, Theresa Cardone, Jaspreet Kaur, and 
Adrian Wittmann--for their amazing app designed to ensure that their 
classmates with special needs have a lunch buddy to build friendships, 
share conversation, laugh, or talk about each other's hopes and dreams.
  Lunch Buddy app helps make all participating students more 
understanding, knowledgeable, kind, and empathetic. Lunch Buddy app 
helps all participating students see the world from each other's eyes.
  Everyone has good days and bad, strengths and weaknesses, and things 
we want to talk about to a friend. For many, high school can be 
difficult and lonely. Lunch Buddy app recognizes this and enables 
participating students to better grasp the God-given worth, inherent 
value, and innate goodness of everyone and says with neon lights: You 
are welcomed and cherished here.
  Working together, under the incredible guidance of their advanced 
software engineering teacher, Mr. Nick Gattuso, Luke, Theresa, 
Jaspreet, and Adrian created a Lunch Buddy app

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which earned them the top prize in New Jersey's Fourth Congressional 
District App Challenge.
  Several weeks ago, the team came to the Capitol, where they were 
nationally recognized.
  Mr. Speaker, I had the privilege of seeing the app in action when I 
visited the high school in February and was struck by the extraordinary 
care and kindness of the winners and, frankly, all the students in the 
class. These young people are truly amazing.
  Allow me, Mr. Speaker, to say a brief word about the teacher, Nick 
Gattuso.
  After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Mr. Gattuso was so inspired by 
the selflessness of so many that he left a highly successful career at 
Bell Labs and took an early retirement and huge pay cut to teach 
because he said he just wanted to give back to others. He said he was 
too old to be a firefighter and too old to be a cop, but he chose the 
noble profession of teacher.
  Today, with great skill, energy, and passion, Mr. Gattuso teaches his 
students, in his words, ``how to use their programming, engineering, 
and problem-solving skills for good.'' Lunch Buddy app epitomizes that 
good.
  Lunch Buddy app, Mr. Speaker, sprang out of a broader initiative to 
create a better learning environment for students with disabilities. In 
2012, Point Pleasant Borough High School established The Panther 
Assisted Learning Software, or PALS, with the stated goal of 
``providing students with multiple disabilities differentiated 
assistive learning technologies and to promote increased independence 
and vocational sufficiency.''
  Additionally, PALS was created to overcome specific barriers to 
learning and to facilitate increased interaction between special needs 
students and their nondisabled peers. It is a wonderful program that 
teaches important lessons that last a lifetime, and I believe this 
program needs to be replicated in every high school in the country.

                              {time}  1045

  The Lunch Buddy app is one of several real-world, operational apps 
that are enhancing the learning and community environment at Point 
Pleasant. Other apps, for example, assist students with their class 
schedules, money management, and resume building and are developed in 
close collaboration with special needs students in the life skills 
class.
  As you know, Mr. Speaker, the Congressional App Challenge itself was 
created to allow students in STEM fields who also work in computer 
programming an opportunity to showcase their software application 
achievements. These STEM fields are central to the global workforce of 
the future, and it is critical for our students to have opportunities 
like this challenge to further develop expertise in computer 
programming and work with teammates to enhance their collective 
creativity.
  We all know that integrating into the academic and social 
environments at school can be difficult for many students, especially 
and including those with a disability. As the founder and co-chair of 
the Congressional Autism Caucus, I have heard stories from countless 
families with children with autism who struggle.
  So I am especially grateful to our four designers of the Lunch Buddy 
app who showed both great technical skill and compassion. They put 
their expertise toward the service of others.
  Mr. Speaker, the world awaits what they and other students in that 
class have to offer.

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