Math school team wins contest

Tyson School 2nd, Star City High 3rd in coding competition

A team of students from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts, a public residential high school in Hot Springs, won first place in the sixth annual Governor’s All-State Coding Competition.

Teams from Don Tyson School of Innovation in Springdale and Star City High School won second and third places, respectively, in the competition that was held at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.

Also recognized during the event were five state finalists for the 2022 Arkansas Computer Science Educator of the Year award.

Student members of the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts were David Clark, Joshua Stallings and Robert Boerwinkle. Each will receive a $2,000 Arkansas Brighter Future 529 Plan college savings scholarship. The team was sponsored by Nicholas Seward.

The second-place team from Don Tyson School of Innovation — Lucas Kellar, Dylan Crawford and Eli Wetzel — each will receive a $1,000 Brighter Future 529 scholarship. The team sponsor was Jessica Mabie.

The third-place team from Star City High was made up of Reid Dutton, Tony Che and James West. Each will receive a 529 scholarship of $500. Team sponsor was Amy Dreher.

The schools that sponsored the first-place, second-place and third-place teams received $10,000, $6,000 and $4,000, respectively, to support their computer science programs.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson, in partnership with ARCodeKids, announced the competition winners.

ARCodeKids, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit established to support the Arkansas Computer Science and Computing Initiative, is using a grant of up to $50,000 from Microsoft Philanthropies to support the competition. Similar funding is planned for the 2023 competition.

More than 150 teams from across the state participated in the digital regional competition.

The top sixteen teams from that regional event along with a team from last year’s first-place school received invitations to compete in the 2022 All-State contest.

The five state finalists for the 2022 Arkansas Computer Science Educator of the Year — to receive a $2,500 award from the Arkansas Department of Education Office of Computer Science — are:

■ Brenda Qualls, teacher at Bryant High School.

■ Carl Frank, teacher at Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts in Hot Springs.

■ Kimberly Raup, teacher at Conway High School.

■ Nicholas Seward, teacher at Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts in Hot Springs.

■ Phillip Blake, teacher at eStem Public Charter Schools in Little Rock.

“Congratulations to the winners and all the students who participated in showing off their coding skills. I am grateful for the enthusiasm of students and educators who have put Arkansas at the forefront of computer science education in the United States,” Hutchinson said in the announcement.

“As more of our students elect to take coding and computer science classes every semester, this competition will continue to inspire creativity and ingenuity in young coders,” the governor said.