Mr. Runcie goes to Washington

On Monday Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert W. Runcie was a guest at the White House in Washington DC where he was invited to participate in discussions on the importance of regional partnerships in Kindergarten to Grade 12 computer science education. He was accompanied to the discussions by Broward District’s STEM(Science Technology Engineering and Math) Science Supervisor Dr. Lisa Milenkovic and Office of School Performance and Accountability Director Christine Semisch.

Superintendent Runcie participated in a panel discussion and shared the Broward District’s efforts to increase students’ access to computer science in schools.

The White House discussions highlighted the need to establish regional collaborators to build computer science communities and organizations dedicated to supporting, advocating for and funding work in computer science.

Broward County Public Schools has the distinction of being the first school district in the US to partner with the national organization Code.org, to expand computer science opportunities for students and increase professional development opportunities for teachers. The District is the recipient of a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a national model for integrating computer science into the elementary school curriculum.

Pertaining to his invitation to the White House event, Runcie said, “It is a tremendous honor to be invited to share information on the great work being done across Broward County Public Schools to increase access to computer science in schools. Computer science is a foundational field that opens doors to a variety of high-wage, in-demand career fields.” He said the District appreciates the ongoing support from its partners, Code.org and the National Science Foundation, who are instrumental in the success of our computer science initiative.

Earlier this month, Broward County Public Schools was recognized during the White House Summit on Computer Science for All for the District’s commitment to expand its computer science initiative. Called #BrowardCodes, the initiative is geared to positively impact more than 50,000 students with computer science offerings at all the Districts 236 K-12 schools in the 2016/17 school year.

Through its Professional Learning Partnership with Code.org, the District is also building a unit of 20 master teacher trainers and plans to increase the number of computer science trained K-12 teachers to over 1,000. Eight of the Districts middle schools currently offer the Exploring Computer Science course, and 2,000 high school students are enrolled in computer science courses at the college level through Advanced Placement or college dual enrollment.