Carrollton Junior High School issued the following announcement on August 13.
Carrollton Junior High School students get help with new technology tools from math teachers Robin Blevins, front right, and LaShenda Nash while Principal Travis Thomaston watches. Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, schools received technology funding to upgrade systems and devices. Here, the students are using Chromebooks with a new ViewSonic smart board, on the wall, providing supplemental support. Districtwide, $2.57 million of the ARP funding was earmarked for technology.
Jared Price, director of Technology for Carrollton City Schools, along with his team, unpacked 3,500 Chromebooks for student use just in time for the start of school.
Pandemic lesson
leads to pursuit
of solutions
While computer technology has been an important tool in the classroom for more than two decades and the digital divide has been a concern since the phrase was coined, when the coronavirus pandemic arrived in the Carrollton community in the spring of 2020, it stripped away all filters to reveal what many had feared – infrastructure and tools were lacking in our community to facilitate learning and working at home to fidelity.
Like all school systems nationwide, Carrollton City Schools quickly transitioned to at-home learning to protect the health and safety of students and staff. Carrollton fared better than most because planning was already under way to develop at-home learning scenarios before the pandemic struck, according to Craig George, assistant superintendent of Operations.
"For more than a year, we had been working on plans designed to serve students during inclement weather and other school disruption events to lessen the impact of school closings," said George. "Little did we know a pandemic would cause us to accelerate the pace."
While strong in the classroom, internet connectivity in many homes either didn't exist at all or was of low quality. Home computers many times could not handle the processing needed to do school work. To remedy the situation, school district IT technicians helped identify publicly accessible wireless networks and Chromebooks were loaned to students for schoolwork.
"We managed to get through the worst of it, but learning did suffer to some degree," conceded George.
Since the problem was nationwide, government funding through the federal American Rescue Plan for digital infrastructure improvements had been earmarked to help schools boost their ability to better serve students, not only for at-home learning, but in classrooms, too.
Jared Price, director of Technology for the district, said this summer has been particularly busy, thanks to the earmarking of $2.57 million for technology from the federal funding the school district received.
"In the past two weeks, we have configured and replaced 99 percent of our 450-plus wireless access points, and unboxed roughly 3,500 Chromebooks," said Price. This, he said, is on top of the normal monumental back-to-school task list during the summer, which included reconnecting and testing teacher computers in roughly 350 classrooms.
Carrollton City Schools Supt. Dr. Mark Albertus noted the funding allowed the district to significantly "refresh" existing infrastructure that still was functional but, as with all technology, was quickly aging out.
"We are grateful to have received this funding at this critical time," he said. "Not only are we better equipped to serve students at home when needed, our day-to-day classroom benefit is also very impactful."
Original source can be found here.
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