Students from underserved and disenfranchised neighborhoods across New York City, particularly those who have historically lacked access to technology, will soon get much-needed upgrades on the road to tech-focused skills and careers.
Mayor Eric Adams, Schools Chancellor David Banks, and City University of New York Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez co-announced on Wednesday a new partnership with Google to expand the Department of Education’s “FutureReadyNYC” career-readiness initiative.
Unveiled at the Google Learning Hub in Manhattan, FutureReadyNYC — a Department of Education program — prioritizes students’ career readiness for high-wage and in-demand jobs in fields including technology, business, healthcare, and education. The program also gives students an opportunity to earn college credits while high school.
Under the expansion announced on June 21, the FutureReadyNYC program will be added to roughly 70 more schools this coming school year — increasing the total number of participants to to 100 schools and serving 7,000 students across the five boroughs.
“We’re building in pipelines of jobs in the tech sector and Google will serve as our first tech partner and employer with our school’s FutureReady New York City initiative,” Mayor Adams said.
As part of the expansion, the city is giving high schools participating in FutureReadyNYC $19 million to support its implementation. Each school may receive between $160,000 and $470,000, depending on the school’s implementation and the amount of classes they will offer.
Google announced a $4 million investment to the Google NYC Tech Opportunity Fund to support computer science education and career development for New Yorkers. $500,000 of that investment will be for CUNY to support its Tech Equity Initiative, which will pilot at the CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College.
FutureReadyNYC is part of the larger Pathways pilot programs, a $33 million initiative to expand career learning opportunities for the city’s public school students, which the Adams administration announced in September 2022.
Adams called the FutureReadyNYC initiative one of the most exciting announcements he’s made as mayor. The mayor pointed to several neighborhoods that the initiative could benefit from the program, such as Brownsville in Brooklyn, South Jamaica in Queens, and the South Bronx — all neighborhoods that are predominantly Black and Hispanic and Latino/a.
“We betray Black and brown children. If you don’t educate, you will incarcerate,” Adams said. “We have to go into other parts of the city and that’s what we’re doing today.”
Google’s 2023 annual diversity report showed that only 8% of Google’s leadership identify as Black and 4.3% identify as a Hispanic/Latinx man. There are so few Hispanic/Latinx women in Google’s leadership that for the past three years, there is unavailable data for this demographic.
The majority of Google’s leadership and overall workforce is white men and women, according to the report. Black people make up 6.4% of Google’s workforce, while Hispanic/Latinx people comprise 6.7%.
Google’s racial diversity in 2023 reflects historical trends in the tech sector nationwide. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission identified what it called “concerning” trends in 2014: White men made up around 80% of tech executives, which were the highest level jobs in the industry. African Americans and Hispanics make-up in the high tech sector showed similar numbers — 7.4% Black and 8% Hispanic.
Adams pointed to a past meeting with William Floyd, senior director of government affairs and public policy at Google, when he was campaigning to be New York City’s next mayor. He recalled telling Floyd, “I need Google,” and that he needed Google to help provide real opportunities for young people in underserved and disenfranchised areas of New York City.
Floyd said that making this belief a reality requires significant investment from the private sector and a partnership with the New York City public school system and CUNY. Google signed on to become the first tech anchor partner for FutureReadyNYC and launched the $4 million Tech Opportunity Fund in 2022 to invest in career learning opportunities for more New Yorkers.
“As a FutureReady partner, we are committed to providing meaningful career connected learning opportunities,” Floyd said. “We believe that these type of interventions are essential for bridging the digital gap between computer scientists and all New Yorkers.”
The investment has paved the way to career discovery programming, paid internships, teacher training, and mentorships from tech professionals. Google will also be offering a data analytics certificate to help students prepare for in-demand jobs in the tech field.
Faith Davenport, an 11th grader at the High School for Youth and Community Development at Erasmus in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood, shared her experience participating in the FutureReadyNYC program through a workplace challenge with Google.
Davenport described the challenge as a six-week experience guided by her teacher and Google staff to identify the digital literacy gap in communities across New York City and create solutions to address this. Davenport said the experience provided her with the creative freedom and support to draw up unique presentations.
“My team I created a mock-up company that directly funnels proper information to those affected by the digital literacy gap across all generations,” Davenport said. “A life lesson that I keep seeing in everyday life and especially in the Google challenge is that our voice matters. It allowed many of us to play on one another’s strengths.”
Schools Chancellor Banks lauded Google as a place of innovation and possibility for New York City’s young people and thanked the tech giant for standing alongside the Department of Education to built equitable pipelines to the tech industry.
“I think about these brilliant Black and brown children all across New York City if given the support and the opportunity, what they will do for the tech industry,” Banks said. They will bring a level of innovation that the tech industry has not even seen, but somebody has to open the doors to give them those opportunities.”
Banks shared an important “news flash” to set realistic expectations about the program.
“Every student that goes to FutureReady is not going to be coming to work at Google,” Banks said. “But it’s about opening up their minds and creating possibilities, giving them a chance to get credentials that will allow them to have lots of other opportunities.”
Interested employers that want to participate in FutureReadyNYC can find out more by contacting FutureReadyNYC@schools.nyc.gov and TechEquity@cuny.edu.
Read more: NYC Council Urges State to Ban Legacy Admissions in Colleges
