By Rose Laudicina
Staff Writer
At a public hearing last Thursday on the 2012-13 budget, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education heard from school technology specialists expressing concern that the money allocated for technology upgrades would not be enough to meet increasing demands.
Because of a new mandate coming down from the state that will require the district to switch to computerized testing by 2014, Ray Reitz, chief technology officer for the district, said that the money in the budget allocated for upgrades will go toward purchasing laptops for testing.
For next year, Reitz said the technology upgrades budget would be getting $202,000 from the district’s Capitol Improvement Plan (CIP), $95,000 from the quarter-cent sales tax funds and $271,000 in funds that were left over from this year’s budget in anticipation of the new mandate.
“We need to start as soon as possible to meet this mandate, building up not only the amount of devices we have, but also beefing up support and Internet access,†Jason Bales, the technology specialist at Culbreth Middle School, told the school board.
In order to support a 2-to-1 computer-to-student ratio, Reitz said he estimates the district will need around $500,000 annually. That does not include funds necessary to make other much-needed upgrades, he said.
“We’re just having to adjust our priorities and make this a priority,†Reitz said.
“We’re just not doing some major projects that we said we were going to do this year,†he added.
Due to the low level of funding for technology, Bales and Kevin Harvey, the technology specialist for Smith Middle School, told the board it falls on the schools to come up with the money necessary to keep up with technology demands.
Because each school does its own fundraising through bake sales and grant writing, the amount of money each school receives differs, meaning that across the district there is what Bales calls a “hodgepodge of different technologies,†causing each child to have a different experience.
“It is easy to find ways we’ve fallen behind,†Harvey said. “A child’s experience between two classrooms or grade levels can be drastically different.â€
However, unless additionally money is allocated for technology upgrades, this inequality of experiences and resources across the district will not be able to be resolved.
“I know that the budget is tight and in better economic circumstances this wouldn’t even be a debate,†Bales said, “but we’re all working to support the needs of our 21st-century learners.â€
The school board will vote on the 2012-13 budget proposal on March 29.