By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
What was supposed to be a discussion at Monday’s Hays school board meeting about the purchase schedule for student computers morphed into a larger debate about the necessity of the district’s one-to-one technology initiative.
To avoid a large budget spike to replace all the devices at once, the district’s Technology Committee was charged with creating a schedule for the replacement of those computers over a four-year period. That schedule would cost an average of about $225,000 per year, starting with the high school computers in 2018-19.
This makes the per-student cost of the program about $75 per year, or 43 cents per day, Superintendent John Thissen said.
However, board member Greg Schwartz raised concerns about the validity of the one-to-one program. Schwartz asked Thissen what the goal of the one-to-one program was.
Thissen said the technology is a tool that provides information to the students. Students also learn to use the technology and are better prepared to harness that technology when they enter the workforce or go on to higher education,” he said.
“From what we can gather, it does appear that just about any job requires some kind of need of utilizing a tablet or some sort of computer. That necessity is there in just about any job at this time,” Thissen said.
Schwartz questioned the purchase of iPads for students, arguing the district should look at less expensive options.
“I think sometimes we get in a cycle where we say this is the latest, greatest thing. We all want that. It is human nature to want the cool, new thing, but the question is what are we trying to accomplish with it?” Schwartz said. “If we can accomplish it with something that is cheaper, then shouldn’t we do that?”
Thissen said, “Curriculum is the most important. You pick the best curriculum for your students and then you find tools. If we end up picking the best curriculum for students, and we end up picking a tool that is unable to work with that, that is wrong. You don’t pick a tool and end up utilizing a curriculum that is tied to it just because of the better deal. You need to have the best with the curriculum. The tool is what you can end up making the deals with.”
The Technology Committee did not recommend a device or brand at the meeting Monday night.
Marie Henderson, instructional technology specialist, said she has not seen another device that allows the communication the iPads allows.
“Apple is by far superior with giving a student the ability to analyze and synthesize the information that is available on a learning objective — the data and topic of your curriculum — and then allowing the student in a powerful way to communicate what they have learned in way that we never did with poster board when I was a kid,” she said. “They are now able to incorporate multimedia in really, truly amazing ways and communicate and show their voice in a wide variety of choices with this device we have currently given them.”
Thissen said the iPads are reliable and have high resale values.
Board president Lance Bickle asked if there is enough data to determine if the one-to-one program has benefited students.
Schwartz said he would like to see an objective measure, such as an increase in test scores or a test that would measure computer skills.
Anita Scheve, Wilson principal and member of the Technology Committee, said technology is so interwoven into the curriculum, discipline, student engagement, classroom participation and student emotional health that it is impossible to separate it out as a single variable that might affect test scores.
Schwartz said the technology purchases become huge expenditures and need to be justified.
“If they say we were going to buy a new school bus, we could measure the effectiveness of that and whether to buy one at 10 years versus 15 years. You could measure the breakdowns between 10 and 15,” Schwartz said. “I understand that technology is a little different. If you want to say that we need these kids to have (technology) to master these set of skills, then, to me, the easy thing would be to create a grade-level or school-level test.”
Board member Paul Adams provided to the board a study, which indicated students with access to one-to-one technology increased their writing, project-based learning, student ownership of their learning and student/teacher communication.
Schwartz suggested a bring-your-device policy at the high school.
Hays High Principal Marty Straub said he did not think that was practical with more than 40 percent of the students at HHS now qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches. He said he is seeing many households with multiple cell phones, but fewer and fewer homes with computers.
Schwartz asked what sacrifices has the board made to take care of its deferred maintenance, adding it is difficult to ask voters to sacrifice for a bond without the board and the district also making sacrifices.
“But you can’t sacrifice the students for the buildings,” Board member Luke Oborny said. “That scares me a lot.”
The technology schedule will come back before the board at a subsequent meeting. Thissen said he would include the schedule for the replacement of teacher computers with the next board report on the issue.