Every Saturday morning University of Miami freshman Anthony Davenport leaves his residence hall on the Coral Gables campus and gets on the Miami-Dade County Metrorail in route to the Brownsville neighborhood. Davenport, a freshman computer science major from Washington Township, New Jersey is the first facilitator for a new computer science “Accelerate Tech” pilot program that has been incorporated into the Saturday school programming at Earlington Heights Elementary School.
The participating students in the program took a computational thinking assessment which informed what version of a computer science curriculum they are receiving. The majority of the students are engaged in the Google Computer Science (CS) First curriculum that uses the Scratch block-based coding language to introduce computer science while others may be placed into a JavaScript based curriculum. 
Dr. Marcus Bright
The pilot is geared towards accelerating the preparedness level of youth to gain skillsets that will make them more economically viable in the emerging tech economy and ecosystem that has been flourishing in South Florida. In today's fast-paced, technology-driven world, having the skills and knowledge to pursue a career in tech can open a wealth of opportunities and provide a stable and fulfilling career path.
The Miami Herald recently published an article about how anchor higher education institutions in the area like Florida International University, Florida Memorial University, and Miami Dade College among others are expanding their programming in an effort to better prepare locals for jobs in the region’s booming tech sector.
For more students to be prepared to step into these programs at the post-secondary education level; there needs to be more intentional programming put in place at the K-12 level in areas like computer science. Two of the primary barriers to the initiation and implementation of computer science in schools in areas like Brownsville are the need for computer science content and the availability of instructors who have the knowledge base to properly guide student development and learning in computer science.
