Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement that exposing the city's students to "STEM and computer science opportunities early on is critical in building a pipeline to both college to career." He added that "requiring computer science as a core requirement will ensure that [Chicago's] graduates [...] can compete for the jobs of the future."

Emanuel is a staunch believer in the importance of teaching kids how to code. He launched CS4All back in 2013 and even urged the president to make high school coding classes a national requirement. Due to his advocacy, 250 teachers in the city are already certified to teach CS courses. Chicago's public school system also has ongoing partnerships with Code.org and even tech giants Google and Microsoft to train more teachers and to develop a CS curriculum that can be implemented across schools.