Technology boom: Colfax schools launching 3-year Chromebooks pilot program
By LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — Students in grades 2 through 12 in the Colfax school district will now have their very own Chromebooks.
“This is a huge step in the right direction,” said Bill Yingst, district administrator, at the Colfax Board of Education’s September 18 meeting.
The Colfax school board reviewed the Chromebook policy handbook and approved Chromebook user fees per year of $40 per student or $20 for students who qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Students in grades 2 to 6 will have the Chromebook computers available to them in the classroom.
Students in grades 7 through 12 will be able to take their Chromebooks home with them for homework.
The Chromebooks cost $275 each, which includes software, and the purchase of the computers was part of the $7.2 million referendum voters approved last fall.
“Without referendum support, we would not be able to do this,” Yingst said.
The Chromebooks were included under the Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) update portion of the referendum-approved spending.
For grades 7 to 12, all together, 400 Chromebooks were purchased earlier this summer, and another 262 were purchased more recently, for a total of $172,150, according to information Yingst provided to the Colfax Messenger.
The STEM portion of the $7.2 million referendum question last November was $1.2 million.
Pilot project
Putting Chromebooks “in the hands of all students” is a three-year pilot project in the school district, Yingst said.
Colfax is one of the few public school districts to provide computers for every student, he said.
About 10 percent of the school districts are providing computers for all students, noted John Dachel, principal at Colfax High School and Colfax Middle School.
Three Chromebooks can be purchased for the cost of one laptop computer, Yingst said.
A Chromebook looks like a slender laptop, and the difference between a Chromebook computer and a laptop is that the Chromebook stores files in the “cloud” on the Internet.
A laptop computer would store everything on the school’s network, or if the laptop belonged to an individual, it would be purchased with a sufficient amount of memory to support how the person planned to use it.
As little as three and a half years ago, providing Chromebooks for every student would not have been possible because the school district did not have wireless Internet access, Yingst said.
The school district can now make use of Chromebooks because wireless is available, he said.
Internet access
Considering the fact that rural parts of the Colfax school district have non-existent or very poor Internet access, how are students who live in the country going to be able to use their Chromebooks at home?
The new curriculum for grades 7 to 12 will allow students to download to their Chromebooks any information they need at school and then take the Chromebooks home to do their homework, which means students do not need to have Internet access at home, Yingst said.
Yingst noted students have been stopping him in the hallway to ask when they would be able to get their Chromebooks.
Four or five years ago, iPads seemed to be the wave of the future. As it turns out, iPads work well for some specific uses, but not for classes where students produce word documents, Yingst said.
The school district went from iPads to Chromebooks because a Chromebook will do everything a laptop will do from a school academic perspective, he said.
Fees
Students will pay a user fee of either $20 or $40 per year, but students also will have the option of buying their Chromebooks.
Parents can choose to purchase a Chromebook for their child from school right away for $275 and not pay the annual user fees.
Students who pay the technology fee, instead of buying their Chromebook, will receive the same Chromebook for the second and third year of the program that they started out with this year.
Families with three or more students will pay a maximum of $100 per year or $50 per year if the family qualifies for free or reduced lunch.
Students who are in seventh grade this year and attend Colfax Middle School and Colfax High School for all six years and who pay the technology fee will get to keep their Chromebooks at the end of six years.
Fee adjustment
According to the original version of the policy, if students wanted to buy their Chromebooks, they would pay $240 if purchased after one year; $200 if purchased after two years; and $160 if purchased after three years.
School board member Christie Hill wondered why the school district would charge $5 more than the original purchase price.
If the Chromebooks cost $275, and the student pays $40 for the first year and then elects to purchase the computer, the cost should be $235 instead of $240, Hill said.
After two years, the cost should be $195 instead of $200, and after three years, the cost should be $155 instead of $160, she said.
Textbooks
Although textbooks are now a rather old-fashioned concept, in the past, the school district provided textbooks for subjects like reading, math, science, history, and social studies, said Ken Bjork, school board member.
Why is the school district charging full price for the Chromebooks? Bjork asked.
The rental fee of $40 or $20 per year is intended to give students and parents some “skin in the game” and “ownership” of feeling responsible for the Chromebooks, Yingst said.
Public education has always supplied textbooks, so why not supply a Chromebook the way biology books were supplied? Bjork said.
“How valuable will a Chromebook be in six years?” he asked.
The school district has 850 students, Yingst said.
The pilot project for the Chromebooks is for three years because the life of the Chromebooks will be about three years, he said, noting that since technology changes so fast, three years is about the amount of time before the technology changes again.
Tech support
With so many Chromebooks in use in the Colfax school district, who is going to do all of the technical support? asked Ken Neuburg, school board member.
The school district’s tech support person is Garrett Maas, Yingst said, and Maas will provide the technical support for the Chromebooks.
“But is one person going to be enough for tech support?” Neuburg asked.
When software updates are needed, they will be “pushed out” to the Chromebooks via wifi and will not have to be individually updated, Dachel said.
According to the Chromebook policy handbook, the Chromebooks will automatically update if necessary when the students have their Chromebooks at school.
The policy also requires students to come to school with their Chromebooks fully charged.
The students are tech savvy and will probably be able to solve problems on their own, Yingst noted.
The teachers also will be able to help them with some of the technical problems, Dachel said.
Neuburg said he was all in favor of the students having Chromebooks but said he was concerned about the technical support and one person being responsible for all of the tech support.
School board member Andrew De Moe wondered about the use of the Chromebooks after the three-year pilot project.
With the life of technology, three years is a logical time to review the program, Yingst said.
The use of the Chromebooks could extend beyond three years, but the program will have to be evaluated to see how the computers are holding up and what, if any, changes would be needed for the policy, he said.
“We are trying to bring opportunity and options to the students,” Yingst said.
Hill wondered if there were options for students whose parents cannot or will not pay the technology fee.
Students who do not pay the technology fee will still be able to use the Chromebooks, but they will not be able to take them out of school, he said.
The Colfax Board of Education approved the Chromebook policy handbook for 2017 with an amendment to the cost of the Chromebooks for students by a reduction of $5 for $235, $195 and $155 for purchasing after one, two or three years on a vote of five “yes” to two “no.”
Voting in favor were Todd Kragness, school board president, and school board members Christie Hill, Andrew De Moe, Ken Neuburg and Kyle Knutson.
Board members Jodi Kiekhafer and Ken Bjork voted against the motion.
Kiekhafer and Bjork did not elaborate at the school board meeting on their specific reasons for voting “no.”
Yingst informed the Colfax Messenger the next day after the school board meeting there had been confusion about the reasons why Bjork and Kiekhafer had voted against the motion.
During the meeting, Bjork and Kiekhafer’s comments indicated they were in favor of the students having the Chromebooks.
The Colfax Board of Education planned to hold a special meeting to consider the motion again in two parts, to approve the Chromebook policy handbook for 2017, and a separate motion to consider the purchase price of the Chromebooks, Yingst said.