WESTFIELD – The current school year has ended. Now Westfield Public Schools is looking toward next fall, set to debut a new training program for high school students in only a matter of months.
Beginning this fall, Westfield Vocational Technical High School will be offering programming and web development training, a four-year course of study that will prepare students for a career in computer science and for admission to college.
“These are some of the most in demand jobs at the moment,” Voc-Tech Principal Stefan Czaporowski said. “(computer repair) is really falling by the way-side, with the development of these tablets and phones.”
Using the aforementioned state-of-the-art tablets and smartphones funding that will be acquired from Perkins funding through the Department of Education, students will learn to create apps for smartphones, tablets, and PC’s as well as develop commercial websites. students will also learn to code using popular industry standard languages: Java, PHP, C, Javascript, VB.NET, SQL and/or Ruby. Students will learn to build websites using HTML5 and CSS3.
Czaporowski anticipates a freshman class of about 12 students to enroll in the program this fall, which he thinks is a good starting point.
“We are actually limited by state law the amount of students we can have enrolled in a class at a time,” said Czaporowski, before saying most shops top out at 16 students, with Allied Health shops topping out 12 students.
Students will have to opportunity to obtain industry certifications, earn college credit, and gain valuable on-the-job work experience. Graduates of the Programming and Web Development course-of-study will be ready for an entry level position, or for pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Information Systems or other Information Technology (IT) degree.
Czaporowski believes that the new program will really shake things up in the region.
“I think it will attract new students from out-of-district,” he said, before saying that Chicopee Comprehensive High School is the only other school to offer this program.
“How many students it will attract, though, I don’t know,” he said. “It takes a special kind of student to be in front of a computer all day.”
Programming and Web Development will teach students how to take an idea for a computer game, smartphone app or interactive website from concept to completion, even giving them a chance to publish their products on Internet app stores. Students may also be able to build and administer commercial websites for small businesses upon completion of the course.
For additional information about this new course, contact Admissions Director Mr. Rob Ollari at (413) 572-6533 or email [email protected].
