When I graduated from Wachusett Regional High School in Holden, Mass., in 1974, I had received three years of college-level computer science instruction. I got my first computer programming job at the University of Utah working for the Projects and Design Lab in January 1975.
It is wonderful that the governor has announced a plan to make computer science available to every student. However, it would appear that he really doesn’t want to fund it. The wage disparity between a computer software engineer and a high school computer science teacher is quite large. With a $600 million surplus, one might think this is a tremendous opportunity to invest in our children’s future and hire computer software engineers at a competitive salary.
Instead, legislators are adjusting the tax plan to ensure that schools will have even less money in coming years. The low-cost plan appears to concentrate on retraining some teachers to be proficient software engineers who can teach computer science. But that doesn’t help kids who would like to take computer science starting in January.
The governor says he has a plan, but where are all the computer science teachers he needs?
Scot Morgan, Salt Lake City