In a School Board meeting Tuesday, Don Wical, director of technology, said that on a scale of one to five for readiness to conduct online testing, the District only rated a 2.5.
That information was provided by the "Online Testing Technology Readiness Assessment," conducted by the state Department of Education.
Wical said the rating boils down to the District not having enough computer labs.
Two ways to fix the problem, he said, is either build more classrooms and computer labs, or put laptop carts in each of Williston's three schools.
Originally, Wical said the school would need more than $1 million to tackle the problem.
But, Wical said he found a company in California that would supply a "full 30-station cart," with a type of Dell laptop for only $12,000. Wical said he has asked the state for eight carts.
With all eight carts, Wical said testing would be focused only on one grade level at a time.
A main concern of Board Vice Chairwoman Ferlicia Cuthberson is that even with eight carts, it still wouldn't be enough to test enough students before lunchtime.
When the district would receive the laptops also was a concern for Cuthberson..
Debra McCord, director of curriculum, instruction and accountability, said because the District hasn't experimented with complete online testing, it may opt to do some testing online and others the traditional way.
McCord added schools also are able to submit a waiver to the Education Department if they feel the school is still not prepared for online testing.
The state assessment wasn't all bad, Wical said, adding, "We are doing some things right. ... They were very impressed."
©2016 the Aiken Standard (Aiken, S.C.), distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
