Rich Fry, the superintendent for the Big Spring School District, said despite all secondary grade students having laptops, there is still the concern of connectivity.
“We’re at about 93 to 94 percent connectivity,” he said. “But we have areas in our district that are still DSL ... and if it’s truly bad enough weather (they will lose power altogether). This day isn’t about completing assignments, it’s truly a day of learning, so connectivity is absolutely a concern.”
The Pennsylvania Department of Education’s flexible instructional day pilot program would allow districts to form a plan addressing work that could be completed from home when there is an unplanned day off for students, such as snow days.
While Big Spring School District has equipped its secondary students with equipment, Carlisle Area School District does not have laptops for every student. It has, however, purchased 1,500 of them to give out to the students who did not have their own devices to use for their classes.
Stephanie Douglas, the director of digital learning and technology for the district, said it’s an expensive endeavor to fund, but if the district submits a plan for the flexible instructional day program, there would definitely be other options that don’t require technology.
“I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation that we’re providing students that don’t already have equipment to have that equipment,” she said. “So that is why our activities would have the option of being online or also offline for students that don’t have Internet in their home. We’re relying on students that have the technology at home or providing them an offline activity.”
Districts such as Cumberland Valley and South Middleton have “bring your own technology” policies that encourage students at the middle and high school levels to use their own laptops, tablets and cellphones in class.
Al Moyer, the superintendent for South Middleton School District, said the cost of supplying students with personal devices is expensive. Assistant Superintendent Joseph W. Mancuso III briefed the technology committee of the school board in October on preliminary discussions with Sharonn Williams, director of instructional technology, and Dennis Royer, computer network administrator. The administrators are looking at the feasibility of a digital conversion model that would tailor instruction to every student through use of a laptop or similar device.
Moyer said South Middleton School District in the future could purchase laptops for the students at the school who do not wish to use their own devices. In South Middleton, a large portion of the students have their own devices that they use in the classroom, Moyer said.
“We are looking at 1-to-1 in the future, but we’re not there yet,” he said. “Maybe once we’re there, this might have more merit for us. The vast majority of our kids, especially at the high school, are utilizing (bring your own technology), but we’re not at 1-to-1 yet.”
Cost
Purchasing laptops for every student in a district would be a significant cost. When Carlisle purchased 1,500 laptops, the district paid $699 for each, Douglas said. Just for the laptops, the district paid $1,048,500. Implementing a program so that students and teachers are able to work together would further the financial burden, though Douglas didn’t have the cumulative cost of implementing the program on-hand.She said because of the cost, it’s unlikely that the school will go to a 1-to-1 model in the near future.
“This is also a time-intensive process, so there’s a lot of manpower involved also to get the laptops ready and prepare them for first use,” Douglas said. “We encourage students to bring their own devices, but if they didn’t, we provided it. Most of our students chose to take the school laptops.”
When Big Spring implemented its 1-to-1 laptop program for students in grades six through 12, the laptops cost the district about $900,000, Fry said. To get the whole program up and running, the district spent about $1.4 million. The district budgeted for the laptop program for the secondary grades over four years, Fry said.
Fry said laptops and the Internet are how students receive information now, so even though he may not be quite ready to have cyber days instead of snow days, he doesn’t want them to unplug when they hit the classroom.
“We’re examining the next step for elementary. We’re budgeted for it, but we’re still not real comfortable with what the next steps are at the elementary level; it’s very different,” Fry said. “The reality is, we have to look at things through their eyes, and what we don’t want to happen is our kids come into school and power down. That’s not preparing them for the society that they’re going to leave us for. So we have to support that type of learning as we move forward.”
He said the district doesn’t necessarily need laptops for every student in order for a flexible instructional day to work, because the school can support literacy for the younger students through activities.
Connectivity
In order for a district to submit a plan to the Pennsylvania Department of Education for the flexible instructional days pilot program, it has to demonstrate that there are contingency plans for every scenario possible. One of the biggest issues with this is making sure that the online programs have an offline option for those who do not have connectivity either on that day or in general.In the Big Spring School District, the schools have hot spots in the parking lots and there’s one in the stadium, and it’s common to see a student sitting in the parking lot downloading an assignment or doing their homework because they don’t have that connection at home, Fry said.
Some of students’ houses may have an Internet connection but one device for a household with multiple students. So requiring the students to do their school work online would not work for those families.
Douglas said when the weather is bad, teachers and students may have other responsibilities, such as shoveling their driveway or helping their family, taking care of kids or babysitting their siblings. They may also lose power, which would knock out Internet and possibly technological devices if they weren’t charged properly.
In Carlisle, about 89 percent of students at the high school level have access to the Internet on a regular basis, Douglas said.
“Knowing that so many of our students, if they didn’t have a laptop or didn’t have a computer at home, they now have one,” she said. “That certainly supports the e-day idea. We now have — not all of our students, but 1,500 of them — have a device. We don’t know that they all have Internet ... there’s about 10 percent that we’re not sure if they have Internet or now, and we know that some of them don’t have Internet and rely on a neighbor or a friend or an eatery or the library.”
©2014 The Sentinel (Carlisle, Pa.)
