Michael Macor, The Chronicle
Tunnel boring machines for the Central Subway will be extracted near Columbus and Union streets.
Lee has been pretty tight-lipped about specifics on the program but earlier said he wanted to increase parent involvement, have professionals volunteer in schools and use private donations to fund wireless access and table computers for all of the city's middle schools.
Middle schools are where the city sees the most distinct erosion in public education, with kids starting to drop out and many parents becoming less engaged, Lee said.
Much of new money has come from Salesforce.com donors, although it's still a fraction of the $40 million in now-drained federal grant funding that had flowed into nine of the city's lowest performing schools in the last three years.
Lee also wants to introduce something similar to the "coder dojo" he saw at Blackrock Castle Observatory on his March trip to Cork, Ireland, where youth were taught computer coding like a foreign language and quickly took to it.
"The kids were creating their own animations," Lee said after the trip. "I could see that 10 years down the road, you've got somebody who is going to be really great in robotics, someone who is going to do animation for Pixar."
- John Coté and Jill Tucker
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