At the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year, Clarke Central High School had a shortage of Personal Learning Devices and struggled to obtain replacements from the District. Illustration by Audrey Kennedy
The Clarke County School District shouldn’t push digital education if it can’t sustain it.
In 2014 the Clarke County School District began to implement the 1:1 initiative which was completed in 2016, providing students in grades 3-12 with Personal Learning Devices (PLDs). The initiative was spearheaded by former CCSD Superintendent Philip Lanoue. This decision stemmed from the U.S. Department of Education’s idea that integrating technology-based learning into the classroom would provide students with online resources to better their education, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s informational page titled “Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning”.
Now, after six years of the 1:1 initiative, the CCSD curriculum has become highly digital with only a few hard copy worksheets here and there.
There have been great benefits to the 1:1 initiative. It provides underprivileged students in the CCSD community with the opportunity to use a laptop. Here, they learn technological skills they will be using in the 21st-century workforce, making education more efficient for a generation surrounded by technology and improving the efficiency in the way academic subjects are taught.
However, the increase in technology in the district has not come without problems. At the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year, Clarke Central High School Media Specialist Maryann Sullivan noticed a shortage of computers.
Considering the increased enrollment at CCHS from 1,520 in 2018 to 1,800 in 2019, the shortage of PLDs was anticipated by Sullivan. Luckily the CCSD was able to provide Samsung laptops for the remaining 150 students that would have gone without them, but that has only temporarily solved the problem for this school year.
What will happen when the population of CCHS increases and the media specialists don’t have enough PLDs to give to every student?
The CCSD needs to prioritize the initiative. Some administrators, including CCSD Superintendent Demond Means, are ignoring the district’s lack of ability to provide students with laptops by saying students don’t need technology to receive a quality education.
“If through that instruction, there is the use of a laptop, then that’s great. If that high-quality instruction is through a pencil, then that’s fine,” Means said.
Education conducted without the use of laptop technological knowledge is essential in today’s world. Once the CCSD spent millions of dollars to provide these devices to CCSD students, and they must continue to provide them what was promised. This is the 21st-century. A pencil simply won’t do.
The fact is, the use of technology is ever increasing in the modern world. Jobs in the tech industry are the fastest-growing occupation and are predicted to grow 13 percent from 2016 to 2026 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This shows the need to continue to integrate technology into public school education.
The CCHS student body may have enough laptops for this school year, but the lack of urgency the district had to remedy the shortage at the beginning of the year is worrisome. It is crucial that the CCSD curriculum ensures its students are equipped with 21st-century skills. By not prioritizing the continuation of the 1:1 initiative it established, the CCSD is preventing students from learning the skills that will benefit them in the technology-based future ahead of them.
