Schools' technology grant money in jeopardy

By Ed Mahon

- emahon@centredaily.com

SECOND OF A THREE-PART SERIES

CDT/Christopher Weddle

Rochelle Debnar, from left, Larissa McGhee and Sojung Kim laugh while researching on laptops for a project at Park Forest Elementary School on Friday, June 5, 2009. CDT/Christopher Weddle

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Five years ago, State College Area School District launched an ambitious initiative to provide each student with a laptop computer.

For the first time since then, the district’s technology funding will remain flat — at $2.55 million — from one year to the next.

Education in schools across the county and state has been changing as interactive whiteboards, laptops and online learning opportunities become more common, thanks in part to funding through the state’s Classrooms for the Future program.

That funding is in jeopardy this year. It’s included in Gov. Ed Rendell’s proposed budget, but not the version of the budget approved by the Senate. That potential hit comes as the recession, declining real estate growth and rising costs, like health care, are already causing school districts to juggle numbers as they try to maintain a technology push.

In State College, those economic difficulties mean the district won’t spend an additional $275,000 to equip third-and fourth-grade classrooms with laptop carts. The board cut that administration request from its preliminary budget, passed last month.

“Functionally, it’s a cut in technology, which is the wrong way to go and we can’t maintain that over the years,” said school board President Rick Madore. “And we need to get back to the idea that technology is going to help us drive things, it’s going to help us teach our kids, it’s going to help us keep our costs down over time.”

Penns Valley is slated to increase its technology and software funding expenses from $255,913 in the 2008-09 school year to $340,899 next year. But school board members discussed eliminating an elementary technology coach position that is part of its strategic plan. The district advertised the position twice in 2008-09, but did not find a qualified candidate.

“I agree with supporting the strategic plan,” member Tina Welch said, but added that the economic and state budget issues have hindered the district’s ability to do so.

“Everybody in this community, everybody in the country is getting hit, from all sides,” Welch said. “So our job this year ... I think should be a first effort to not add any more concerns and worries.”

Board members asked the administration to prepare several possible budget scenarios, including one that would include no tax increase for the average homeowner.

Philipsburg-Osceola plans to increase its technology budget from $334,000 to $600,000. That doesn’t include software costs, which remain flat. Part of that $600,000 would pay for another technician position, which is being swapped for a seventh-grade reading position.

P-O officials say they need the technician to keep the district’s existing technology up and running. Seventh-grade students will continue to have reading instruction in language arts class, and acting Superintendent Stephen Benson said the district is focusing on reading in social studies, science and all other classes.

“We’re going to read as much as ever, just in a different way,” Benson said. “And we want to incorporate technology into those classrooms.” North Lincoln Hill Elementary

School fourth-grader Logan Williamson completed his first year with an interactive whiteboard in the classroom.

He and his classmates have used Activote, handheld devices that allow them to instantly respond to multiple choice questions posted on a whiteboard. His teacher, Robert Hoffer, would receive instant feedback on how well his students know their vocabulary and social studies terms.

Logan’s favorite use of the Activote was during a schoolwide mock presidential election.

“It’s learning and you’re having fun at the same time,” said the 10-year-old.

Elsewhere in the district, Amy Yarrison’s sixth-grade class used a whiteboard to study three-dimensional figures. On the screen, she could pull apart the pieces of a cube, so that students could see all the sides more clearly.

At the high school level, algebra teacher David Yoder sat in the back row of the classroom as his students reviewed homework on a projector. He was able to take his class notes, turn them into PDF files, and post them online the same day, so that his students — and their parents — could review them.

“I’m sitting out amongst the kids and that seems to help with rapport,” he said. “Everybody’s paying attention, and I can kind of monitor what’s going on a little better.”

Technology administrators in both P-O and State College say the key to integrating the technology — both educationally and financially — is to take a gradual approach.

“If we were to just mandate it and say everybody’s got to do this, I think that we would have had a lot of backlash,” said Patrick Hockey, P-O’s outgoing technology administrator. Instead, he said, the focus is on “creating pockets of success” by finding teachers interested in integrating technology and then supporting them.

“That becomes very contagious,” Hockey said.

During the 2008-2009 school year, the State College Area School District introduced laptop carts to be shared amongst all fifth-grade classrooms.

Tom Mincemoyer, State College’s technology director, said he understands the financial constraints and believes success in the classroom is what will convince others that money put toward technology is worth the investment.

“My real source of that convincing is the feedback we get from teachers. They say that there’s no better way to do instruction,” Mincemoyer said.

Since the laptop initiative began, the district’s technology funding has increased each year. In 2004-2005, State College had an annual technology budget of $1.6 million, not including staffing. That number is now at $2.5 million annually, but Mincemoyer estimates that it would take $4 million annually to make the full one-to-one laptop initiative a reality.

“We haven’t really set a target date for that,” he said. “What we’ve been doing is kind of systematically picking the next step.”