Wake County began providing Chromebooks for all 160,000 students to use while learning at home during the pandemic. But repeatedly on Tuesday, school administrators and school board members said they can’t continue that practice post-pandemic.
“The cost of technology is high,” Superintendent Robert Taylor told the school board’s facilities committee. “One-to-one is something that a district of our size just cannot afford. It’s about how we have appropriate access.”
No decisions were made during Tuesday’s committee meeting. But school board chair Chris Heagarty is asking his colleagues to consider reallocating some of the $209 million that could be spent on new technology over the next seven years to cover other needs, such as more money on school maintenance.
“We need to take strong action to move the needle and address these important facility issues,” Heagarty said. “Unless something changes at the state government, we’re going to have to do it by reprioritizing the money that we get from the county.”
PANDEMIC RESPONSE TO PROVIDE COMPUTERS
But things changed in 2020 when schools switched to online instruction during the pandemic. Schools used one-time federal COVID relief aid to purchase devices, usually Chromebooks, to give to students to use at home.
Like most North Carolina school districts, Wake told the state Department of Public Instruction it doesn’t have the money locally to replace all the aging COVID-era devices.
Taylor said the goal now should be to provide access to students who don’t have their own device.
“Being one-to-one is just really something we can’t afford,” Taylor said. “But we can have a ratio where every student has access to a device. But what we’re all saying is, we’ve got to get out of the pandemic mode.”
School administrators will present a recommendation this fall on what level of devices to provide moving forward. Options that could be considered would be whether every elementary school student needs a device and whether they should be allowed to take their Chromebooks home with them.
LESS TECHNOLOGY, MORE MAINTENANCE?
The school district’s capital improvement program contains a mix of cash and money borrowed from issuing bonds to pay for school construction and renovation needs. In 2022, Wake County voters approved a $530.7 million school construction bond issue.
Wake historically has used part of the cash portion of the building program to pay for purchasing new computers that can be used in school.
But Heagarty pointed Tuesday to the ongoing complaints about malfunctioning HVAC (heating, ventilation and cooling) systems that have forced schools to send students home early due to classrooms being too hot or too cold.
“Issues with our HVAC systems, issues with humidity that contribute to potential health problems to students and staff,” Heagarty said. “We have to find a way to fund all of these competing needs and, again, while we know that technology needs to be a part of it, I think we have to ask hard questions about our reliance on that technology.”
Recently, Wake warned that students will face disciplinary consequences and potentially criminal charges if they engage in a new TikTok challenge to short-circuit their Chromebooks to make them smoke.
Each lost and destroyed Chromebook is coming out of Wake’s budget, Heagarty said.
“I’m not advocating for any abolition of technology,” Heagarty said. “But we know we have limited funds.”
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