The Iron Yard, a coding school with campuses in D.C., announced it is closing down in a blog post Thursday.
"In considering the current environment, the board of The Iron Yard has made the difficult decision to cease operations at all campuses after teaching out remaining summer cohorts. We will finish out summer classes completely, including career support," the blog, posted by communications team leader Lelia King, reads. "While our journey is coming to an end, we will always take pride in the thousands of people our staff helped to launch new careers."
In March, The Iron Yard announced it would shut down in San Antonio, Columbia, South Carolina; Cincinnati; and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
The Greenville, S.C.-based tech and coding school was founded in 2012. The Iron Yard put its roots down in D.C. in late 2014, and its campus just moved to a new space downtown in December.
In an email with DC Inno, King said the team was still looking at what will happen with the existing D.C. campus location, so it's unclear when everything will be moved out.
"Current students will still receive the full education and career support program from our staff through the end of their cohort," King told DC Inno. "After that, our campus will close entirely."
In terms of a timeline, King said students will be able to finish out the entire 12-week program, including their Demo Day. Students will also still receive four weeks of career support.
The final day for the D.C. campus will be Oct. 13, King said.
"The Iron Yard is fully committed to providing students the same quality educational experience that we’ve provided every other student in the past," she wrote to DC Inno.
Shanaz Chowdhery, regional director for General Assembly in Washington, D.C., which was The Iron Yard's biggest competitor in the local market, told DC Inno that the closing of The Iron Yard will not change their operations.
"We’ll continue to support the broader DC tech community. From the beginning, GA has focused on a broader set of products," she wrote. "Coding classes are a piece of it, but we also teach things like UX design, data science, marketing, and do so across several formats to meet people where they are and to keep pace with the market."
Coding schools nationwide have struggled in recent years. And The Iron Yard notes that making these types of tech-specific schools work is tricky.
"The industry as a whole is still young and its leaders face the challenge of a nascent market, as well as the demands facing all institutions in the higher education marketplace," the blog post said.
This post has been updated with comments from The Iron Yard and General Assembly regarding the D.C. campus specifically.
DC Inno reporter Elisa Wiseman contributed to this piece.
