{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://hurd.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/partnership-announced-train-teachers-computer-science", "Partnership announced to train teachers in computer science", "2016-12-14", "2016", "2016-12", "Republican", "House", "TX", "Will Hurd", "H001073", "hurd.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "U.S. Rep.\u00a0Will Hurd, R-Helotes, announced Wednesday that 40 middle school math teachers in his vast congressional district will receive low-cost training in March to integrate computer science into their curriculum.\n\u201cCoding is the language of the 21st century economy,\u201d Hurd said at a press conference at the BiblioTech South branch on Pleasanton Road. \u201cIf our students can\u2019t speak it, they\u2019re going to be left behind.\u201d\n\u00a0\nThe training will be provided by the nonprofit Bootstrap, through the\u00a0University of Texas Center for STEM Education. Four tech companies \u2014 Dell, Intel, Facebook and Brocade \u2014 donated a total of $35,000 to fund the training, said\u00a0Carol Fletcher, deputy director of the Center for STEM Education. The\u00a0Texas Education Agency\u00a0will provide a smaller amount of matching funds, Fletcher added.\nThe teachers can apply on\u00a0Hurd\u2019s website\u00a0by the end of January to receive the three-day training at the end of March. Breakfast, lunch and transportation will be included, as will lodging for teachers coming from more than 60 miles away.\nHurd was re-elected last month to the 23rd Congressional District, which stretches west from San Antonio\u2019s suburbs to the Mexican border.\nThe superintendents of\u00a0North East and Southwest Independent School Districts\u00a0\u2014 both in Hurd\u2019s district, which curls around inner-city San Antonio \u2014 praised his effort Wednesday. North East will pilot the program at\u00a0Lopez Middle School, said Superintendent\u00a0Brian Gottardy.\nAndrea Connor, a seventh-grader at Lopez, remembered using computers in kindergarten to learn her vowels and consonants.\n\u201cI\u2019m not really sure what I want to become when I\u2019m older, but I do know I want it to be technology-based, because our future lies in computer science,\u201d she said.\nTraining 40 teachers will expose an additional 5,000 middle school students to computer science in the fall, Hurd said.\nHurd was inspired to focus on computer science in high school, while interning at the\u00a0Southwest Research Institute. He became a\u00a0Central Intelligence Agency\u00a0operative and joined a cybersecurity company after leaving the agency. He said San Antonio has the second-highest number of cybersecurity jobs in the nation, behind the Washington, D.C. area.\nTexas also has about 42,000 unfilled computing jobs statewide, even though those jobs come with an average salary of $89,000, Hurd said.\n\u201cWe need to change that, and that means getting to these kids sooner,\u201d he said.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://hurd.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/partnership-announced-train-teachers-computer-science"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.5350719913840294, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}