Palatine Township District 15 approves using relief funds for take-home Chromebooks
Palatine Township Elementary District 15 board members Wednesday night approved spending a portion of federal relief funds to supply all fourth-graders with laptop computers - a move expected to enable every student to have a take-home device.
Board members voted to buy 1,325 Lenovo Chromebooks for the fourth-graders for 2020-21 with $343,175 of the district's estimated $1.6 million CARES ACT allocation, which does not involve the local education fund. The school board previously authorized the purchase of Chromebooks for all fifth-graders for the next academic year.
"I also think it's worth saying we'd like to plan as though we're going back to school without incident," District 15 board President Lisa Szczupaj said. "And that very well may be the case. And hopefully that is the case. But I think we need to be prepared, if in fact we go back to school and then something should happen and we have kids back at home for a week or two weeks, that we have robust planning in place and devices so that children can continue to learn during that time period."
Permitted uses for the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act cash include technology for online learning.
When the state's school shutdown began in mid-March, District 15 was thrust into distance learning without laptops or other take-home devices for all 12,000 students. In addition, many students with school-issued devices did not immediately have Wi-Fi access.
With all children in fourth and fifth grades receiving new laptops for 2020-21, the district expects to have enough Chromebooks to reassign them as take-home devices for grades two and three. And 2,000 touch-screen Chromebooks already in possession of the district will go to children in kindergarten and first grade.
Superintendent Laurie Heinz said those moves should result in a "one-to-one" program, meaning every child will have a device in the next school year.
District 15 addressed the lack of take-home Chromebooks in March by gathering the devices that typically are for school use and distributing them to families for the distance learning. Students in grades six through eight had take-home laptops this year.
"We are going to have our kids keep their Chromebooks for the summer," Heinz said.
School board members Wednesday night also approved applying $99,225 from the federal relief funds for 315 hot spots and service through a 12-month contract with T-Mobile for Education. District 15 spokeswoman Morgan Delack said 295 T-Mobile hot spots have been distributed and that families are allowed to keep them over the summer.
District 15 received 500 more hot spots from Verizon, but billing has been delayed until they are needed, Delack said. The Verizon hot spots that were expected to arrive in early April came several weeks late.