By Laura Katauskas | Staff Reporter
Continuing to ensure students have access to technology, the Valley View School District 365u is looking to further its reach to include Chromebooks for its second and third-grade students in its accelerated program.
The district originally crafted a three-year plan to provide Limitless Learning 1 to 1; providing a Chromebook to all fourth through post twelfth grade students. They completed the initiative in two years and now plan to extend the 1 to 1 resource to all third grade and second grade Challenge students by moving Chromebooks that are now stored in carts to these classrooms for individual use rather than being used as a shared resource.
In addition, plans are to replace older laptops in use for at least for five years used by staff throughout the district. According to the district, these laptops are now experiencing a high rate of component failure with parts that are costly to replace.
The technology department is proposing to replace 835 staff laptops that have reached their end of life, plus 118 building resource / tech spare laptops for a total purchase of 953 laptops. These will be replaced with a new laptop that was piloted by Building Technology Support Staff (BTSS). The new proposed laptops will include superior features that will provide an upgrade as to what staff currently were using.
These projects would be completed over the summer and would be funded through Title 1 allocations and the district’s technology lease funds.