Authored By chloe.morrison

A new coding school is coming to the Innovation District to help meet local demand for the tech workforce, the mayor’s office announced Wednesday.

“Executive leadership in companies across Chattanooga tell me about the challenges they face when trying to fill good-paying IT jobs,” Mayor Andy Berke said in a prepared statement. “These jobs can create a clear path to the middle class for many of our citizens.”

Thanks to a partnership with The Enterprise Center, Birmingham, Alabama-based company Covalence is bringing its boot camp-style coding school to Chattanooga. Classes are slated to start May 30.

Covalence teaches aspiring developers how to code by offering accelerated, demand-driven full stack and front-end coding programs.

Other classes will also take place in September, and after that, there will be three 10-week courses per year, Haley Blackburn with Covalence said via email.

Blackburn said that Covalence leaders love the city and saw it as a good fit for the school.

“We saw Chattanooga as a really spectacular, growing city technology-wise, and a coding boot camp is something the city has been wanting for some time now,” she said via email. “The gigabit internet and the growth of startups and companies in the technology sector were very appealing to us.”

Covalence will occupy the first floor of the former municipal water building at 1001 Lindsay St. The ground floor has been vacant for several years.

On Jan. 31, the City Council unanimously approved a resolution allowing The Enterprise Center to use a portion of the ground-floor space to operate a coding school.

“With the hard work of The Enterprise Center and the invaluable expertise Covalence brings to the table, this partnership means more Chattanoogans will soon learn those very specific skills necessary to fill open IT positions and, ultimately, create a better life for themselves and their families,” Berke also said.

Anyone who wants to apply can do so here for free. After the application is filled out, each candidate will go through two rounds of interviews.