Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource Today

Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource Today

As part of a major attempt to boost multifariousness in the tech industry and its own ranks, semiconductor giant Intel announced Wednesday that information technology will give $5 million to the Oakland Unified School District over the next five years to expand information science pathway programs – and volition guarantee internships and jobs to successful graduates.

The grant, ane of the largest corporate investments in Oakland Unified, is i of the latest examples of businesses investing in schools in an effort to "grow their own" time to come talent.

"We knew we wanted to exercise something in K-12 education that targeted underrepresented minorities and nosotros idea we should showtime in our own backyard," Brian Krzanich, chief executive officer of the Santa Clara-based Intel, told USA Today in making the announcement.

Kraznich unveiled the program during a keynote address at the Push Tech 2022 Summit in San Francisco. The height, organized by the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Button Coalition, is focused on edifice diversity in the technology industry, which has been stung past reports detailing its predominantly white, male person workforce.

Intel will create a "scholars" program in Oakland Unified that is expected to reach 2,400 students over the next five years, initially at McClymonds and Oakland Technical high schools. The goal is to send at to the lowest degree 600 graduates to college to pursue computer science careers.

The money volition allow the district to aggrandize and improve existing programs at those high schools that are focused on computer science and engineering careers: a Stalk – science, applied science, applied science and math – pathway plan at McClymonds and a computer academy at Oakland Tech, said Brian Stanley, executive director of the Oakland Public Didactics Fund, which helps raise money for Oakland schools and worked with Intel on the grant.

"Our vision is that nosotros will get more Oakland kids on the pathway to the jobs both of today and jobs in the future," Stanley said. "A lot of companies nibble around the edges of training or preparing kids for the time to come. This is a meaningful investment that I call back shows leadership from a company like Intel and it'due south going to be great for Oakland kids and smashing for Oakland teachers."

The grant will allow for better training and externships for teachers to help strengthen the reckoner science curriculum, Stanley said, besides as enhanced mentoring and internship opportunities for students.

Intel will provide scholarship funding for students and volition guarantee internships and jobs at the company upon graduation, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

The grant proclamation comes equally a new report decries the "dismal" information science offerings in California high schools – especially in schools that serve high numbers of low-income students and students of color.

Three-quarters of California high schools with the largest populations of students of color practice not offering whatever computer science courses at all, said a written report released Thursday by the Level Playing Field Institute.

The study, chosen Path Not Found, surveyed the 20 largest districts in California, including Oakland, and constitute significant disparities in the availability of computer science courses. Half of the 20 largest districts do non offer whatever Advanced Placement computer science courses, the report said. Five out of the 20 do not offer any information science courses at all.

"We cannot go on to take conversations near diversity in the tech manufacture without addressing vast gaps in opportunity for all students to proceeds an equitable foundation in computing," report author Alexis Martin said in a statement. Martin is manager of research at the Level Playing Field Institute, which works to bring more than minorities into the STEM fields.

In Oakland Unified – where 69 percent of high schoolers are students of color – only .08 percent of the district's 12,096 loftier schoolhouse students are enrolled in informatics courses, the written report said. In Los Angeles Unified, the state's largest school district with 198,180 high school students, about 3 percent of students are enrolled in computer science courses.

"Figurer science pedagogy is merely too scarce, flow, peculiarly in districts with demographics similar to ours," said Oakland Unified spokesman Troy Flint. "That'southward why this has been a large area of focus for united states, not only through this partnership with Intel merely through the overall Linked Learning Initiative."

Oakland is one of nine California school districts participating in the initiative, which works to expand career pathway programs that combine rigorous academics with real-world work experience. In Nov, Oakland voters approved a $120-per-year parcel tax to fund the expansion of career pathway programs throughout the district.

The grant from Intel will assistance boost access to information science courses for Oakland students and open doors to lucrative career fields, Stanley said. The commune hopes to leverage the Intel investment into additional funding from other corporations, he said.

"I think the broader vision is to really provide a national model for how you lot can do this in urban schools," Stanley said.

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