Photograph by Talia Cole
According to Computer Science Teacher Ira Holston, Berkeley High School had but one section of Computer Science six years ago. “Three years into the past, we had four sections,” said Holston, who taught two of these sections.
Holston said this was a pivotal year in the growth of Computer Science at BHS, in part because, shortly thereafter, a new Advanced Placement (AP) course called AP Computer Science Principles came online. Last year, Holston says BHS had seven sections of Computer Science.
“What I’m trying to do here,” Holston said, “is build a Computer Science Department.” Currently, though there is a section of the BHS Course Catalog dedicated to Computer Science, Holston explained that the lack of Computer Science at the high school level is not unique to BHS but in fact a global problem. “Only 25 percent of high schools in California have any sort of Computer Science thing going on,” Holston added.
Holston said that having a dedicated computer lab with fast internet and two computer science teachers makes BHS a very special school. Holston said that while students may not realize it, they are lucky because these resources are certainly not typical of a high school.
Business Insider ranks software applications development as the third best job of the future, computer systems analysis as the fourth, computer and information systems management as the eighth, and software systems development as the thirteenth. These rankings were reportedly based on the United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics’ projections for job growth across hundreds of occupations between 2014 and 2024. Thus, skills in computer science are in high-demand on the job market, and are projected to continue to be in high demand for many years to come.
The rapid growth of computer science offerings at BHS has paralleled the growth of demand for jobs in the field. Holston said that over-enrollment likely means more revenue for the school in the future, since state funding for schools is on a per student basis. An increase in overall funding could mean more room in the BHS budget to expand course offerings, suggesting that computer science may continue to grow in conjunction with the growth in demand for the skills it teaches on the job market.