The Rochester Public School district has been expanding its computer science options since 2015. The program in Rochester schools has grown each year since with some exciting new programs coming in 2021!
 
The Rochester Public School district has been expanding its computer science options since 2015. Although many PLTW courses have been offered at the elementary and secondary level, and AP CSA had been offered occasionally, the first introductory CS-specific course offered at all the high schools was "IT Launch", based on material from the MN Center for IT Excellence's "IT Exploration" course, CS4All's "Exploring Computer Science", and units from Code.org. Since then the pathway has exploded, added a new course every year. The next class was IT Infrastructure: a hardware, security, networking, and tech support-focused class based on the CompTIA Fundamentals+ material, followed by two new Concurrent Enrollment classes in Javascript and Mobile App Design. Finally, a new course in Data Science with Python was added this fall due to popular demand. A diagram of the pathways can be found here: https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1OmrfWirqqC0RlsYUAkiDtcETYTM2fGnRYrO3V6NrBjg/edit?usp=sharing . Apart from IT Launch, most of these courses are offered at the new Rochester CTECH building, where students from all the high schools come to explore careers in seven different pathways in a professional environment. In the fall of 2021 with support from IBM, Rochester will be opening Minnesota's first "PTECH" pathway, where students can earn a 2-year college degree during their high school years including internships and mentorships with local computer science professionals. Our next steps are to bring Computer Science into the existing elementary and middle school curricula to bring awareness and excitement for CS to more students from across the city. For more information on any of these programs, please contact John Bartucz at jobartucz@rochesterschools.org