We want all of our Charlottesville students to graduate with 21st century skills such as coding. So beginning with kindergarten, our iSTEM teachers start to familiarize children with these key concepts.  Our elementary students experience a wide range of coding opportunities, from Bee-bots to Lego Robotics to makey-makeys to logic games that teach the principles of coding, just to name a few. We observe the national “Hour of Code” — and then some — at all our schools.

As students move into the acclaimed engineering programs at Buford Middle School and Charlottesville High School, they take on greater coding challenges with Arduino boards in tandem with CAD design in SolidWorks.

At our area’s technical education center, CATEC, a pathway leads to valuable IT certifications through a partnership with tech leader CISCO.

The CHS club called BACON (Best All-around Club of Nerds) is a perennial contender in the elite programming competition Zero Robotics, a global contest sponsored by MIT, NASA, and space and defense agencies around the world.

• To learn more about our computer science offerings:
  • The “Program of Studies” outlines the specific courses offered at Walker,  Buford, and CHS
  • Visit CATEC.org to learn about the IT pathways and partnership with CISCO.