Lincoln Public Schools named best school district in the nation for Computer Science curriculum

Lincoln Public Schools was named the best district in the nation for computer science.

The award recognizes the district for providing computer science opportunities to students of all ages,” Kent Steen, LPS curriculum specialist for computer science said.

“We’ve been able to, over the last five years; really create strong K–12 pathways to computer science,” Steen said.

Steen accepted the award in Seattle on Monday; the trophy was handed to him by Melinda Gates, the founder of the Melinda Gates Foundation and the wife of Bill Gates, the creator of Microsoft.

But Steen said he can’t take credit.

“It is a team effort,” Steen said. “We have an amazing team of teachers.”

He also thanked the district officials and the community for supporting these efforts.

Every high school and elementary school has computer science classes. Right now four middle schools don’t offer the classes, but Steen said that’s going to change next year.

He said there are 800 students currently enrolled in computer science classes.

Some of those students tested their skills, and other students tried it out for the very first time, during Lincoln East High School’s Hour of Code on Tuesday.

Junior Claire Griffin said she’s taken a few coding classes.

“At first it’s confusing, become some people know more than you but you get the hang of it as soon as you take the class,” Griffin said.

All East students were invited to spend the hour coding, many of them tried it out because of the careers available in computer science.

“It’s going to be easier for students like me to do better in the future,” junior Anthony Simnick said.

Steen said there are more than 3,000 computing jobs open in Nebraska currently, and hundreds in Lincoln.

That’s why an East High School math teacher said he encouraged his students to attend Hour of Code.

“Being an algebra teacher, I have a lot of freshman so I wanted to get exposure to them as early as possible so they could explore if this is possibly something they want to do,” Peter McGinley said.

Griffin said she doesn’t know what she wants to do yet, but she’s thankful for the possibilities LPS has given her.

“Computer science is now used in a lot of career opportunities, so I think whatever I’ll go into it’ll have that,” Griffin said.

Steen said students can benefit even if they don’t want a career in computer science.

“It will give them fundamental computational thinking skills that will help creativity, communication, problem solving, persistence; all those things will be good no matter what they do,” Steen said.

The next goal is increasing the diversity in the computer science classes.

They hope to enroll 50% female students by 2020.

East High School has already made great strides in this goal.

“They do amazing outreach, the coaches of the female teams will encourage her kids to go out take computer science, we have teachers who’ve hand written notes to girls to invite them to take the classes,” Steen said.

Currently they have more than 40% females enrolled in computer science classes at East.

“I’m excited to be a part of something that’s building up,” Griffin said. “I know that my friends can be involved in it after I’ve been involved, it’s super exciting.”

If you’d like to get involved in coding, LPS is hosting an Hour of Code Saturday, Nov. 9. It’s open to the public, and you don’t need any coding experience to attend. Click here to learn more: