Knox middle and high school students will now be able to keep their technology devices.
As part of the switch to Chromebooks, each student will be charged an annual fee of $92.33, according to Superintendent Dr. William Reichhart. “That fee will be for three years, and then those Chromebooks will become the property of the students,” Reichhart told the school board Tuesday. “We will hand those things to the students at the end of the third year, and they will become theirs. So the better they take care of it, the better they will have three years from now in order to use it.” However, students will still have to turn in their Chromebooks over the summer, until the three-year period is up and they officially become the property of the students.
The fee will be included in the overall book rental and technology fee. For the 2018-2019 school year, high school students will be charged a base fee of just over $115, plus additional costs depending on specific classes. The fee for students in grades six through eight will be just over $108, with the bulk of those fees being the Chromebook charge.
Reichhart says fifth grade will end up with the highest fee at $146.94. “We’re kind of in between here,” he explains. “Grade five still has textbooks and consumable materials, and they also will have, for the first time, the use of a Chromebook, a technology device, and we offset some of those costs. The corporation was able to do some things here so that they [wouldn’t] have to pay the full value. But it is a little bit higher, and I just want fifth grade parents to know that that’s because their child will not only have textbooks, but they will also have the Chromebook.”
Meanwhile, fees at Knox Elementary School will range from $80.22 to $103.29, depending on grade level.
In addition to paying for technology devices and textbooks, Reichhart says the fees will also cover the cost of various consumables. “In the past, those came out of Instructional Supplies in General Fund budget, but really, those are consumables, and the state allows us to charge that to parents,” he told board members. “So that may be relatively new, but it should’ve been going on the entire time.”
The Knox School Board Tuesday unanimously approved the 2018-2019 book rental and technology fees, as presented.
