By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The Hays USD 489 school district continued to debate its one-to-one technology program during a meeting Monday night.
The district’s technology committee brought information to the board that included all scheduled technology purchases for the next eight years.
The committee was asked to create a schedule that would spread out purchases of devices for the district’s one-to-one technology program over four years to distribute the cost of the program more evenly over time.
The cost of the one-to-one program would be $219,000 to $258,000 per year over a four-year cycle. Complete technology costs including network expenses and replacement of staff computers would bring the total for technology to $239,000 to $371,000 per year over the eight-year schedule.
The one-to-one program was originally implemented in the 2015-16 school year at a cost of $1.315 million.
Although the original discussion was to be about the schedule and purchase of high school devices in the first year of the schedule in 2018-19, in the last two meetings, the discussion morphed into a larger debate of the appropriateness of the district’s one-to-one technology program.
Board president Lance Bickle said he appreciated the work the committee did on the schedule, but he questioned the appropriateness of spending such large amounts of money on the program when the district had so many other pressing capital needs.
Board member Greg Schwartz also continued to question the technology program, reasserting his desire to have some sort of measure of the effectiveness of the program, possibly a technology proficiency test.
Board member Paul Adams said he thought the technology program was important to district’s career-readiness goals.
The two community members on the technology committee were present at the meeting and both said they thought exposing students to technology was important to future work experiences.
Alan Wamser of HaysMed said technology is critical to all business at the hospital and younger employees are adapting more quickly to ever-changing technology advances.
Wasmer, who is also a parent, said he thought access to technology was also important to his children’s communication with teachers. He said the technology allows teachers to bring content to the students in different ways. When his son struggles with an algebra problem, he accesses a video example of the problem online.
Derek Johnson of Fort Hays State University said technology is ingrained in how the students interact with their world.
“I feel it would be a disservice not to take advantage of technology and embrace that. With these kids, this is how they see education. I think if we embrace their social and technical desires, we will have a lot better interaction,” he said.
Sophia Rose Young said she supported the four-year schedule. She said she also supported the concept of using online textbooks that would be available on one device versus paper textbooks.
Schwartz said he would like to see what other capital expenses the district will request for the next budget year before making a decision on technology. Tracy Kaiser, finance director, said those requests will start coming in during March.
No action was taken on the technology schedule Monday night.
Long-range facilities plan
The district also discussed its long-range facilities plan. The board plans to set a separate board meeting to discuss facilities and plans for a future bond. That date has not yet been set.
In other business, the board:
• Designated the superintendent and board attorney as the negotiating agents for the 2018-19 school year.
• Appointed Mike Walker to Hays Area Children’s Center Board
• Set the summer school and driver’s education fees for summer 2018. The fees will be the same as last year.