Rockland BOCES, School Districts Awarded $2.8 Million STEM Grant

(WEST NYACK, NY) -- District Superintendent/CEO Dr. Sarah Chauncey and Chief Operating Officer/Deputy District Superintendent Dr. Mary Jean Marsico today announced that Rockland BOCES, Mouse Inc., and a consortia of Rockland County school districts were recently awarded a $2.8 million Smart Start grant from the New York State Department of Education (NYSED). The five-year grant will support the development, implementation and sharing of innovative programs that provide professional development and support to increase expertise in computer science, engineering, and/or educational technology among teachers in grades K-8.

"This $2.8 million grant award presents a tremendous opportunity for our agency and the school districts we serve," said Chauncey. "We want to thank NYSED for approving these funds and allowing us to engage a diverse student population with the latest computer science and STEM pedagogy and curriculum."

The Rockland BOCES Smart Start project will deliver professional development and support that will serve 110 K-8th grade teachers, 23 administrators and 33,931 students each year of the grant; 550 teachers, 115 administrators, and 41 schools over the five-year contract period. Teachers and administrators will participate in professional development and support for a maximum of one year and each year, new cohorts will be established. Focus student populations will include English Language (ELL) and multilingual learners and students with disabilities, as well as those students who are traditionally underrepresented in computer science, including females and minorities.

"We’re excited about receiving this grant to support our learners from all across Rockland County," said Marsico. "We are grateful for NYSED's continued investment in innovative approaches to professional development, and the education of our children in the ever-evolving digital landscape."

Rockland BOCES applied for the Smart Start funding as the lead applicant for a consortium of seven component school district, with a county-wide student population of nearly 40,000. Partnering districts include the East Ramapo Central School District, the Nanuet Union Free School District, the North Rockland Central School District, Nyack Public Schools, the Pearl River School District, the Suffern Central School District and the South Orangetown Central School District. These districts have a diverse student body with averages for economically disadvantaged students that range from 13% to a high of 98%.

The Smart Start program (and component activities, materials, professional development resources, etc.) supports the mission of the New York State Board of Regents, which is to ensure that every child has equitable access to the highest quality educational opportunities, services and supports in schools that provide effective instruction aligned to the state’s standards, as well as positive learning environments so that each child is prepared for success in college, career and citizenship.

Rockland BOCES’ Smart Start Program will include evidence-based curriculum and best practices for Computer Science instruction. For grades K-5, curriculum includes Tufts and MIT Media Lab’s Scratch Junior, Harvard and MIT Media Lab’s Scratch Creative Computing and Code.org’s CS Fundamentals. For grades 6-8, curriculum includes Code.org’s CS Discoveries, which is widely used by middle schools across the country and covers topics such as programming, physical computing, HTML/CSS, and data. All curricula cover topics in other New York State CS and Digital Fluency topics, including data and artificial intelligence, networks and systems design, cybersecurity, impacts of computing, and digital fluency.

Implementation support will be provided by Mouse, Inc. within each of the school districts. Support services will include professional learning communities, online collaborative spaces, collaborative planning sessions, and curriculum planning and mapping.

Providing professional development for focus populations was an expressed priority for each of the partnering Rockland County school districts. Each course identified for this project was specifically selected because it is intentionally designed to broaden participation among underrepresented students in computer science and STEM. Particularly for girls and underrepresented minorities, computer science has long been introduced to young people in a way that is disconnected from their interests and values – emphasizing technical detail over creative potential. The proposed professional development sequence supports the development of personal connections to computing, by drawing upon creativity, imagination and interests, which have shown promise in research to support underrepresented students in computer science education.

For more information about Rockland BOCES, visit rocklandboces.org.

For more information about Mouse, Inc., visit mouse.org.