Students at the Oregon-Davis School Corporation will soon have new devices following a decision by the school board members Monday night.
Superintendent Bill Bennett explained to the board members that the current iPad devices are in their fourth year of tech deployment in grades kindergarten through 12th grade. Bennett stated that it was thought that a change to Chromebooks might be a better fit for students in grades 3-12.
Bennett said, “One of the reasons we started looking at Chromebooks – we have a lot of teachers who wanted keyboards and other accessories with the iPads that we didn’t have at the time. We also ran into some issues with our Apex program which is what I call our Credit Recovery Program.”
Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd graders will continue to use iPads as they have proved to be easier to operate with a touch screen and the log-in is less complicated, according to Bennett.
Thanks to a connectivity grant the corporation received, along with federal ESSER III money, the corporation will be able to upgrade all student devices for a total of $35,000 out of the budget. The grand total in grant funds is $131,582.
The new devices will be used for three years before they will cycle out due to useful life span. Bennett noted that the current devices were stretched an extra year beyond their expected life.
The board members unanimously approved the purchase.
