Company Profile
BootUp PD, Inc.
Company Overview
About BootUp Professional Development
We prepare and empower teachers and implement elementary coding and computer science programs nationwide in order to reach ALL students, creating equitable access to 21st-century skills. This mission statement provides an overall scope or purpose for doing what we do. Every school district we work with, every project we work on, or every person we collaborate with in some way helps us achieve our mission. If we achieve our mission, our vision of “[e]nsuring ALL elementary students learn to code by empowering teachers” will happen.
BootUp PD is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that has worked on elementary computer science implementations in over 60 school districts, with over 800 teachers and reaching over 300,000 elementary students around the country. In addition, our free coding curriculum and resources are being used on every continent except Antarctica! We will impact thousands of elementary teachers of coding and hundreds of thousands of elementary students in the coming years and by joining our team, you will be able to assist with expanding our impact and continuing to improve upon what we offer.
BootUp’s Values
Integrity
We strongly value and prioritize being honest and having strong principles for doing what we do. Integrity is consistently one of the first values we want to be known for as an organization and as individuals.
Equitable/Egalitarian
BootUp's successes over the years are a result of our ability to collaborate on a team with diverse backgrounds, expertise, opinions, perspectives and experiences.
Innovative
We are constantly striving for innovative and creative solutions that assist with our overall mission and vision. This includes everything from our approach to professional learning to highly engaging interest-driven, project-based curricula.
Proven
Part of our success is because our approach is not only based on educational research, but from extensive feedback from a variety of sources. We actively seek out feedback that continues to refine what we do.
Flexible and Relevant
We believe that computer science education is not only growing at a rapid pace, but is iteratively changing over time. We try to stay flexible and relevant by keeping up-to-date on the latest research and practices in computer science education.
Inclusive and Welcoming Culture
All of us at BootUp genuinely enjoy not only the work that we do, but who we work with. We come from varied backgrounds and cultures that are shared and embraced among the team.
Engaging and fun!
Not only do we try and make the professional development and curriculum engaging and fun, but our work environment and collaborations, as well.
Simple and Iterative
We don't like to make things overly complicated. By keeping things simple, we are able to focus on finetuning our approach over time in order to continuously improve what we do. This iterative process is similar to the Japanese concept of "kaizen ( ??)," which encourages team members to think through and share opportunities for improvement. If you can do something better with even fewer steps, you have captured the essence of this simple approach.
BootUp PD, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. We know diversity makes us stronger and we are committed to maintaining an inclusive and welcoming environment for all our applicants and employees. BootUp does not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, creed, religion, color, national origin, age, veteran or military status, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, or disability.
Company History
BootUp PD, Inc. was initially a charitable giveback initiative of Emerald Data Solutions, the creator or BoardDocs, the premier board management solution for school districts and other organizations all over the United States. The original focus was to get elementary students involved in coding, but the main focus quickly evolved into providing high-quality professional development to empower the teachers of those students.
When Emerald was acquired in 2016, BootUp was formed as a nonprofit corporation and subsequently received a determination letter from the IRS as a 501(c)(3) organization. We continue to expand our reach all over the country doing full-district elementary implementations that are customized to the school district partner.
Benefits
BootUp offers incredible flexibility in scheduling, vacation, and work schedule to allow employees to not only contribute to our nonprofit mission, but striking an appropriate work-life balance.
BootUp provides an $800/month allowance for each full-time employee to select, if they choose to do so, health insurance, dental insurance and vision insurance. BootUp pays for long-term disability insurance and life insurance of $50,000 for each employee.
BootUp provides a SIMPLE IRA plan which provides a match of up to a 3% of an employee's pay in a tax-favored retirement plan.
BootUp also offers a Flexible Spending Plan option where employees can set aside an amount pre-tax to pay for health care expenses not otherwise covered by health insurance.