BY JESSICA PARKS
While Brooklyn boasts
the second-highest number
of training programs
for aspiring technology professionals
in the city, the
courses are unevenly distributed
throughout the borough
— with an embarrassment of
riches in the bougie northern
Brooklyn nabes, and a defi -
ciency of courses for southern
Brooklynites, according
to a new report.
Center for an Urban Future
and Tech:NYC issued
their fi rst-ever report on technology
training programs for
both K-12 students and adults
around the city and found a
striking disparity between
geographic regions of New
York — which they claim
further exacerbates the lack
of diversity in the local tech
workforce.
For K-12 programs, Brooklyn
is home to 122 tech programs,
yet 28 — or 23-percent
— of those are concentrated
in the northern Brooklyn
neighborhoods of Park Slope,
Red Hook, and Carroll Gardens.
Meanwhile, six of Brooklyn’s
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COURIER L 14 IFE, FEBRUARY 21-27, 2020
18 Census-defi ned
neighborhoods have two or
less sites that offer tech programs
for school-aged children.
The neighborhoods of Bensonhurst,
Bath Beach, Sheepshead
Bay, and Gerritsen
Beach collectively lack even a
single program, while only one
course can be found in East
Flatbush and in Dyker Heights
and Bay Ridge. Residents of
central Brooklyn’s Prospect
Heights and ‘Crown Heights
North’ feature two locations,
as do Canarsie and Flatlands,
according to the report.
The lack of geographic
diversity is even more pronounced
for adult tech training
programs, as Brooklyn
offers 107 courses, with 43 —
Mariah Ahmed, Aldiana Feratovic and Valtina Teplani use the button-making machine at the Kings Highway
Library’s new Teen Tech Center. Photo by Stefano Giovannini
or 40-percent — based in the
neighborhoods of Fort Greene
and Brooklyn Heights. The
rapidly gentrifying neighborhood
of Bedford-Stuyvesant
is home to another 12 sites for
adults.
Four Census-defi ned
neighborhoods — all of which
are in southern Brooklyn —
have just one adult program
location. That disparity
leaves wanna-be technologists
in Brownsville, Bensonhurst,
Bath Beach, East Flatbush,
Bay Ridge, and Dyker
Heights out of luck.
Despite the shortcomings
of the borough’s tech offerings,
the report found that the
city is moving in the right direction
overall when it comes
to technical skill-building —
yet city educational honchos
still have much work to do
in improving and expanding
technological training to
communities in less-affl uent
places like southern Brooklyn.
Digital divide
Southern Brooklyn lacking in
tech-training programs: Report
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