About SCSD Smart Start Grant

Overview- Award amount $500,000 a year for 5 years (2021-2026)

The Syracuse City School District’s (SCSD) Smart Start Program is a large scale, innovative, professional development program designed to address the need to increase expertise in computer science and engineering among K-8 teachers, providing them with a combination of content knowledge and content-specific pedagogy. Over the course of five years, the Smart Start Program, using a hybrid cohort/train-the-trainer model, will train at least 500 SCSD K-8 instructional staff and administrators. Each intensive, research-based, one-year program cycle will incorporate a variety of professional learning structures, including but not limited to: online course modules, team learning, professional learning communities, and job-embedded coaching.

The SCSD is an urban high-needs District with over 21,000 students, a majority of whom are from traditionally under-represented groups: 50% are African-American; 22% are white; 13% are Hispanic/Latino; 8% are Asian or Pacific Islander; 6% are multi-racial; and 1% are American Indian. Students with disabilities comprise 20% of the student body, 19% of the students are English Language Learners, and 88% are economically disadvantaged. Families served by the SCSD experience compounding risk factors of language barriers, illiteracy, food insecurity, homelessness, mental health issues, and inadequate health care that present enormous barriers for students.

Sophisticated forms of teaching are needed to develop student competencies and effective professional development is needed to help teachers learn and refine the instructional strategies required to teach these skills. Using Smart Start Program grant funds, the SCSD will partner with the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization to provide comprehensive research-based professional development (PD). The SCSD Smart Start Program will expand K-8 teachers’ content knowledge about computer science and engineering and provide them with the expertise and skills that are necessary to provide developmentally appropriate instructional strategies. Through these research-based professional learning and instructional coaching activities, K-8 teachers in the Syracuse City School District will: be able to describe the essential elements of effective computer science- and engineering-related career pathways and the related career readiness standards; be aware of the career opportunities in the Syracuse community and know how to obtain labor market information; become familiar with the draft New York State K-12 Computer Science and Digital Literacy Learning Standards; use education technology to develop computer science- and engineering-related career exploration lessons/units aligned to the state standards; and share information with students and parents about computer science- and engineering-related CTE programs of study offered at the secondary level that align with the related career pathways.

Throughout the grant period, the SCSD and SREB will develop and maintain an online repository of materials, processes, and products developed for the SCSD Smart Start Program, including but not limited to: professional development and support modules and programming; professional development, support, instructional, and curriculum resources, lesson plans, methodologies, measures, software, code, documentation, white papers, implementation guidance, training materials, evaluation forms, data compilations, and reports.