Classes at the Phoenix Coding Academy High School are set to begin in August, and students will receive a professional and technological education.
Funding for the school came from a 2011 Phoenix Union Ballot measure which sought a bond to provide $230 million. Seeing the national trend toward more STEM-focused education, Phoenix Union officials decided to spend a portion of it on building a new, technologically-specialized high school.
The cost of the school was $12 million out of the $230 million construction bond, according to PUHSD Director of Communications Craig Pletenik.
Phoenix Union High School District Board Clerk Ian Danley, who has been recognized by the White House as a Champion of Change, said that the Coding Academy reflects a culture of ingenuity in Phoenix Union.
“We are the most innovative, nimble and bold high school district you’ll find,” Danley said. “And we’re just getting started.”
Seth Beute, the school’s principal, said that he sees his new position as the opportunity of a lifetime. He got his start in education as a teacher at Metro Tech High School, where he taught a career and technical education program.
“I feel like it’s the perfect fit for me,” Beute said. “It’s a dream job for me as an educator.”
The Coding Academy joins Bioscience High School as the second school in the Phoenix Union High School District geared toward a focus on STEM education. Beute said that the Coding Academy’s curriculum would be based the standards laid out by Bioscience’s curriculum.
Central and Camelback High School currently field award-winning coding clubs. Some students from the clubs expressed frustration that they would not be able to attend the Coding Academy.
“I wish that I was a freshman so that I could go here,” said Misael Gamboa, a junior at Central High School.
Beute said all students at the academy will learn programming and coding basics, however they will have their choice of a career technical education path.
At Bioscience High School, the students are split up into engineering and biomedical pathways during their junior year. In their senior year, students apply for internships that are provided by over 100 companies in the Phoenix area. Some of these companies include St. Joseph’s Medical Center and Hospital as well as the University of Arizona Medical Campus.
Similarly, Beute said the Coding Academy is working with a number of organizations around the Phoenix area. Students can pursue internships with City of Phoenix, GoDaddy, Microsoft, Google and elsewhere. The Coding Academy’s professional programs differ from the same programs offered in other Phoenix Union high schools in that students begin receiving career and technical education in their sophomore and junior year. Traditionally in Phoenix Union, students enroll in career and technical education programs their junior and senior year.
Upon graduation, students will be able to either apply to college or go into specific “tech pathways” in which they can get jobs. Some of those specialized pathways include software development, web development and robotics.
“Coding will be an essential skill that every student learns while they’re here, but we understand that not every student wants to be a programmer,” Beute said. “That’s how we developed the other pathways for the students.”
The inaugural class of the Phoenix Coding Academy High School will be between 100 and 120 students, Beute said. The Academy’s goal is to bring in a new freshman class of about 100 every year so that in four years the student body will total about 400. Beute said that he and the other staff members have been reviewing applications and conducting interviews with potential students and that they are on pace to accept most of the applicants.
A major part of the application process is a 500-word essay which students must write about what they like to do and why they want to go to a technical school. In addition to this, interviews are conducted with the students’ families. If the number of applications exceeds 120, a lottery system would be implemented, Beute said.
Beute said the school currently has seven faculty members, which include six teachers and a counselor. The Coding Academy will draw students from all over the Phoenix Union High School District. One of the main goals of the Coding Academy is to introduce diversity into the coding and tech world, Beute said.
“We really want the student body to be a microcosm of the metro area,” Beute said.
Contact the reporter at Daniel.Perle@asu.edu.
