Is Delaware doing enough to build residents’ tech skills from an early age?

The 2023 RealLIST Engineers honoree and software developer for M&T Bank was ready for something new and plunged into Zip Code Wilmington’s Java bootcamp.

“No matter who you are, there’s a risk in it,” Bayard told Technical.ly. “You’re taking a huge leap to imagine yourself doing something totally different, right? And you have to be a little bit of a risk taker to do that. Especially if you’re coming from something that is stable, but not what you want to be doing.”

As a parent, and now a Freire Charter School board member, Bayard sees that the pressing tech talent pipeline issue impacts future tech talent long before they’re eligible for bootcamps and workforce development programs geared toward adults.

“One of the things that I feel like there’s a lot of good attention on, but still needs a lot of work to do, is the education pipeline coming up from high school — even younger than that, like middle school, elementary school,” she said. “How do we get the education system to focus on programming skills, and how do you prepare the students for what is going to be the kind of jobs [they] are going to have in the future?”

Right now, Delaware has nearly a thousand open tech job posts, according to Technical.ly’s Tech Economy Dashboard featuring proprietary data sourced by Lightcast.

Also right now, teaching computer programming is not a stated priority by Delaware’s public school districts. Each district’s strategic plan has a one-to-one technology policy, meaning that a computer or digital device is provided for each student. But coding and technology as subjects aren’t a focus until high school, when students can choose a computer science Pathway. This, despite research showing that teaching coding starting at the elementary school level can develop metacognitive skills and increase opportunities for underrepresented kids to enter the tech workforce later on.

There are movements to teach coding to children, such as CodeMosaic, a program for 8- to 11-year-olds on Wilmington’s East Side. Still, most kids don’t learn programming at a young age — and it’s not just a Delaware thing. As other countries lean in, the United States in general has been skeptical that coding holds the same kind of importance as “the basics.”

“I feel like when I talk to people, it’s concerning that we need to work on it,” Bayard said. “We’re not anywhere near being at the point where they’re going to declare victory on that front, you know? It feeds into — do we have enough people for our workforce? Does Delaware have the skills to have an exciting tech sector and further the region?”

Delaware should have enough people for a healthy tech workforce, with a million residents and more than 21,000 high-tech occupations — up 16% over the past five years, per the Tech Economy Dashboard. It’s the skills part where, like the rest of the US, a gap remains.

Risk takers like Bayard can’t be the only ones filling it.

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