SACRAMENTO, Calif. — For the past few months, high schooler Jayana Nanayakkara has been helping kids learn to code on computers at the Code School in Folsom, and getting them excited by, as he said, the endless possibilities of computer science.

What You Need To Know

  • The California Department of Education said the state has an absence of computer science classes

  • Over 50% of state high schools do not offer any kind of computer science courses, according to the department

  • Assemblymember Marc Berman represents a large portion of Silicon Valley and said California is doing a disservice to its students

  • Assemblymember Berman has introduced a bill coauthored by the state superintendent that would require all public and charter high schools to offer a computer science course and make it a high school graduation requirement by the 2030-31 school year

He said the biggest impetus to becoming interested in computer science himself, a fortunate happenstance at his elementary school.

“One of the programs that really got me interested in coding was something called Hour of Code in elementary School,” Nanayakkara said. "It’s run by Code.org, and it was a program that brought coding to schools where it wasn’t a curriculum standard already."

The California Department of Education said the state has an absence of computer science classes.

Over 50% of state high schools do not offer any kind of computer science courses, according to the department.

Assemblymember Marc Berman represents a large portion of Silicon Valley and said California is doing a disservice to its students.

“Thirty-one other states in the country require that every high school at least offer a computer science course, to their students,” Berman said. “Eight states, all the way frome South Carolina to North Dakota to Nevada, have computer science as a graduation requirement.”

And why he’s introduced a bill coauthored by the state superintendent that would require all public and charter high schools to offer a computer science course and make it a high school graduation requirement by the 2030-31 school year.

And while a number of groups have come out in support of the bill, others worry the bill diminishes charter schools’ ability to customize their courses for communities, and also worry about the cost, according to The Charter Schools Development Center’s Executive Director Eric Premack.

“Nowadays budgets are especially squeezed,” Premack said. “Given that the economy is slowing down, and the state’s revenues have been plummeting. So, adding additional costs at a time when our revenues are not keeping up is really problematic.”

Berman said he wants the bill to be flexible enough for different needs and is mindful of any extra associated costs.

“The hope is that between funding that we’ve already appropriated and getting a little bit creative and identifying existing buckets of funds, that hopefully we can accomplish this without too much increased funding,” Berman said.

For Nanayakkara he said he hopes computer science courses become more widely available and is glad off-site coding schools like his exist to fill the gap. 

“Right now it’s becoming even more important to be able to communicate with computers,” Nanayakkara said. “And it really is a digital age.”

And why, he said, he will certainly be going for a computer science degree at a university.