EL CAJON, Calif. - Three Grossmont High School juniors need help getting to an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. Kyle Trusso, Angelica Ramirez, and Cristina Munoz recently entered a smartphone app into the Congressional App Challenge and won.
It took them less than three weeks to develop and design the application that digitizes a student’s school planner.
“Everyone needs to know when their homework is due and when their assignments are due,” said Trusso.
“If they just had it on their phone, that would make things ten times easier,” said Ramirez.
Their app beat out hundreds of other entries.
“I really wasn’t expecting it,” said Munoz.
Grossmont AP Computer Science Teacher Patrick Giovengo thought it was outstanding his students won.
“For them to be able to have the opportunity to move on and go forward with, that’s just exactly what I’m here for,” he said.
However, the three can’t afford the trip to Washington, D.C. They started a GoFundMe page to help raise money.
“The help from the community would be awesome,” said Trusso.
The award has inspired the three to greater heights.
“It makes me want to do more with the opportunities that I get,” said Ramirez.
“It makes us know that we can actually do things,” added Munoz.
Trusso wants to attend San Diego State after graduation. Munoz and Ramirez both want to attend UCSD. The young women would be the first people in their families to graduate from college.
“[I’m] proud in all of us,” said Munoz.
“Proud in myself and just, I guess kind of happy that I can, I don’t know, make my parents proud, too,” said Ramirez.
The three students are now rebuilding their smartphone app and rebranding it as TMR, which stands for Time Management Resources. It’s also their the initials from their last names.
