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Wednesday
March 17, 2010 Since 1922 |
Laptops equal big controversy in BH
By Austin Kinghorn
Baytown Sun Published October 9, 2005 Laptop computers have become a full-size issue in the Barbers Hill school district’s upcoming $43.8 million bond election, with some voters seeing cutting edge technology while others simply see controversy.
In a bond election where almost nobody contests the need to expand facilities for the ninth fastest growing district in the state, some residents are feeling heartburn over the district’s request for $1.5 million to expand to the high school a program that has put a laptop computer in the hands of every middle-schooler.
Early voting in Barbers Hill school district’s $43.8 million bond referendum will be available through Tuesday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the district’s administration building. Election day is Oct. 15.
For voters like Joe Rabalais, a Mont Belvieu resident, the issue at hand has as much to do with what the program’s track record as how the district is asking voters for approval of the program’s expansion.
“I absolutely do not support that at all because of the experience we’ve had in the last year and a quarter in what middle-schoolers are doing with them,” said Rabalais. “In my little sphere of influence I’m trying to get people to think about it and vote against it.
“I welcome the rest of the items on the bond but I hope Proposition 1 fails because of the laptops,” he said.
After five meetings that spanned three months, the Citizen’s Advisory Committee, a group of residents and school personnel charged with crafting a bond issue, recommended to the board that the bond election be composed of three separate propositions. Proposition 1 was a wide-ranging $42.3 million package that would encompass an expansion of the district’s facilities to accommodate surging growth, including a new elementary campus and additions to the high school.
Proposition 2 provides far reaching upgrades to the district’s field house along with other athletic amenities such as new seating at the softball field. An expansion of the livestock facility is also included. The price tag: $2.4 million.
The short-lived Proposition 3 included one item—a $1.5 million expansion of the student laptop program to the high school. Two weeks after the committee recommended the three propositions to the board, trustees chose to roll the laptop program into Proposition 1 at an Aug. board meeting.
Advisory committee member Andrew Moyers supported the recommendation to offer the laptop program as a stand-alone proposition and implied the move was made out of concern voters would reject the proposal.
“To me, there was some finagling going on,” Moyers said. “I don’t know to what purpose other then someone wanted to make sure it would pass.”
Moyers said rolling the program into Proposition 1 helped ensure voters wouldn’t deny the district its desire to get laptops in the hands of high schoolers.
“If it has any merit it will pass on its own, but if you stick it in with classrooms and people vote for classrooms you get your computers as a tagalong,” Moyers said.
The switch was enough to make some committee members like LaRae Greer reconsider how they would vote on the bond package she helped to craft.
“I don’t think it’s necessary in my personal opinion,” Greer said. “I had several concerns over the expense and the exposure the children would have with access to Internet at all times.”
Greer said she feel so strongly against the program that without the separate Proposition 3 to turn down, there is a “big possibility” she will vote against Proposition 1.
But board President Philip Joines said the laptop program expansion dovetails with technology allocations already included in Proposition 1, such as upgrades to existing computers, more centralized infrastructure, new software and a new phone system.
“We didn’t try to slide something in,” Joines said. “My opinion is we feel strongly enough about our technology program as a whole that we fully believe this laptop program goes hand in hand with our technology program as a whole.”
Board member Carmena Goss, a former librarian in the district, said the move was made because the laptop program fits with the academic priorities set forth in Proposition 1. She said she also based her decision to support the change on a favorable review of the program by middle school teachers.
“We had asked them the night they gave the report at the board meeting, ‘Do you think we should expand the program?” Goss said. “All that had used it and gotten training said yes, definitely.”
Goss said she did not remember any discussion over the prospect of a Proposition 3 failing to pass muster with voters.
“I think the statement that was made was pretty much that the laptop initiative has to do with academics and we ought to put it in Proposition 1,” Goss said. “Proposition 2 had mainly to do with athletics and the ag initiative and we just felt like we ought to put it in Proposition 1.”
The advisory committee’s spokesman, Fred Skinner, said the move didn’t bother him and that the board reserves the authority to change the bond package as it sees fit.
“It isn’t an issue that would make me vote differently for the bond package,” Skinner said. “Really, it’s a small portion of the bond but for some reason it tends to draw more attention than other things.”
Skinner said the committee chose to suggest the separate proposition because it wanted to ensure passage of critical classroom and facility expansions.
“We wanted to be cautious and make sure [Proposition 1] got though, but really that’s probably where it [the laptop program] belongs— in the technology portion of the main proposition,” he said.
While the laptop program bears a relatively small price tag when compared next to other big-ticket items in the bond package such as renovations to the intermediate campus and classroom additions at the high school, Superintendent Wayne Rotan said the laptops will save money in other areas. There is still an overall out-of-pocket expense to provide the program, but the $1.5 million price tag is not a black and white number, Rotan said.
The district is already scheduled to replace 400 computers at the high school, an order that won’t be necessary if the laptops arrive. Additionally, Rotan said the laptops would allow four classrooms to be converted from computer labs back to regular teaching environments, a move he says will cut down on the need to add new space to the building and save the district roughly $215,000 per new classroom.
The laptops will also slash expenditures on textbooks as the program is designed to eventually provide all learning materials electronically.
“Textbooks themselves are very expensive,” Rotan said. “Students are carrying around $400 to $500 worth of books every day. I think that’s something everybody takes for granted until they go to college and buy their own and you realize the cost of those things.”
Middle school Principal Cindy Price, who has overseen the implementation of the program at that campus stood behind the idea, saying the learning curve was short but that teachers have now been trained and know how to integrate the laptops into their daily curriculum.
The laptops make learning an interactive, engaging process, Price said.
“In those textbooks that are online you can be reading about a battle in the Civil War and you can click on a link and have a little video link that they can see,” Price said.
Students are also learning to make presentations on PowerPoint and utilize other software that is commonplace in today’s workforce, she said.
“Last year we had them but now we know what to do with them and how we can use them more and more in the classroom,” Price said.
Middle school teacher Tom Richert he has been able to progressively increase his use of laptops in the classroom.
“There’s been considerable problems in the past but as we’ve met these problems we address them and things clear up,” Richert said. “Personally, the thing I like most about the laptops is that when you get them out, the kids are just more interested. Their eyes light up.”
Richert said he was “flabbergasted” when he heard there was community opposition to the program.
“This is the future,” he said. “If we don’t get them into this technology now they’re going to be behind.”
The district’s technology director, James Banks, said the key to getting the laptop program on track has been education—but for teachers, not students.
“The teachers came back and said we need more training in areas like integration,” Banks said.
The district responded by shipping middle school teachers to observe laptops in action at campuses in Irving and holding days worth of in-house training before the start of school this year.
“The first challenge we saw right off the bat was I think we just put the laptops out there and didn’t do a good enough job of training the teachers and informing parents on how they were going to be used,” Rotan said.
Other adaptations the district made included enhanced internet filters which include a feature that alerts administrators if a student tries to disable the filtering software—even when the laptop is at home. Textbooks are now loaded onto the computer instead of spread out among CD-ROMs, and a lightweight sleeve that allows students to slip their computer in their backpack instead of carrying a bulky carrying case are being offered.
Additionally, a more extensive handbook as well as a training video are being sent home to parents.
Banks said between 60 and 70 percent of textbook material has been eliminated at the middle school, and that number is continually rising.
Barbers Hill is on the forefront of what district leaders project will eventually become the status quo—a laptop for every student and all learning resources available through computers, which allow for more student interaction and more frequent content updates.
“Regardless of how people view it or do not view it, if we don’t get prepared now, in two to three years this is so going to roll out anyway and we’ll have to play catch up and that’s going to be even more expensive and time consuming,” Banks said.
For Joines, the question of the new technology is not a matter of if but when.
“What sets Barbers Hill apart is we have foresight and we are proactive on things,” Joines said of the board’s supportive position of the laptop program. “We want to be on the cutting edge. I don’t want to sit around and wait on someone to do something and us follow. I want to be a leader.”
+ + +
Early voting in Barbers Hill school district’s $43.8 million bond referendum continues from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Tuesday. The general election is Saturday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Precincts 4 and 10 vote at the administration building. Pcts. 5, 8 and 11 vote at the Cove Community Bldg. on FM 565 South.
+ + +
The cost for homeowners
According to estimates supplied by the district, the resulting increase in taxes on a home worth $100,000 would see a tax increase of $26 in 2006 and $13 in 2007 and 2008.
Taxes on a home appraised at $215,000 would increase by $63 in 2006, $31 in 2007 and $32 in 2008.
The average home value in the district is $119,000.
Baytown Sun Published October 9, 2005 Laptop computers have become a full-size issue in the Barbers Hill school district’s upcoming $43.8 million bond election, with some voters seeing cutting edge technology while others simply see controversy.
In a bond election where almost nobody contests the need to expand facilities for the ninth fastest growing district in the state, some residents are feeling heartburn over the district’s request for $1.5 million to expand to the high school a program that has put a laptop computer in the hands of every middle-schooler.
Early voting in Barbers Hill school district’s $43.8 million bond referendum will be available through Tuesday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the district’s administration building. Election day is Oct. 15.
For voters like Joe Rabalais, a Mont Belvieu resident, the issue at hand has as much to do with what the program’s track record as how the district is asking voters for approval of the program’s expansion.
“I absolutely do not support that at all because of the experience we’ve had in the last year and a quarter in what middle-schoolers are doing with them,” said Rabalais. “In my little sphere of influence I’m trying to get people to think about it and vote against it.
“I welcome the rest of the items on the bond but I hope Proposition 1 fails because of the laptops,” he said.
After five meetings that spanned three months, the Citizen’s Advisory Committee, a group of residents and school personnel charged with crafting a bond issue, recommended to the board that the bond election be composed of three separate propositions. Proposition 1 was a wide-ranging $42.3 million package that would encompass an expansion of the district’s facilities to accommodate surging growth, including a new elementary campus and additions to the high school.
Proposition 2 provides far reaching upgrades to the district’s field house along with other athletic amenities such as new seating at the softball field. An expansion of the livestock facility is also included. The price tag: $2.4 million.
The short-lived Proposition 3 included one item—a $1.5 million expansion of the student laptop program to the high school. Two weeks after the committee recommended the three propositions to the board, trustees chose to roll the laptop program into Proposition 1 at an Aug. board meeting.
Advisory committee member Andrew Moyers supported the recommendation to offer the laptop program as a stand-alone proposition and implied the move was made out of concern voters would reject the proposal.
“To me, there was some finagling going on,” Moyers said. “I don’t know to what purpose other then someone wanted to make sure it would pass.”
Moyers said rolling the program into Proposition 1 helped ensure voters wouldn’t deny the district its desire to get laptops in the hands of high schoolers.
“If it has any merit it will pass on its own, but if you stick it in with classrooms and people vote for classrooms you get your computers as a tagalong,” Moyers said.
The switch was enough to make some committee members like LaRae Greer reconsider how they would vote on the bond package she helped to craft.
“I don’t think it’s necessary in my personal opinion,” Greer said. “I had several concerns over the expense and the exposure the children would have with access to Internet at all times.”
Greer said she feel so strongly against the program that without the separate Proposition 3 to turn down, there is a “big possibility” she will vote against Proposition 1.
But board President Philip Joines said the laptop program expansion dovetails with technology allocations already included in Proposition 1, such as upgrades to existing computers, more centralized infrastructure, new software and a new phone system.
“We didn’t try to slide something in,” Joines said. “My opinion is we feel strongly enough about our technology program as a whole that we fully believe this laptop program goes hand in hand with our technology program as a whole.”
Board member Carmena Goss, a former librarian in the district, said the move was made because the laptop program fits with the academic priorities set forth in Proposition 1. She said she also based her decision to support the change on a favorable review of the program by middle school teachers.
“We had asked them the night they gave the report at the board meeting, ‘Do you think we should expand the program?” Goss said. “All that had used it and gotten training said yes, definitely.”
Goss said she did not remember any discussion over the prospect of a Proposition 3 failing to pass muster with voters.
“I think the statement that was made was pretty much that the laptop initiative has to do with academics and we ought to put it in Proposition 1,” Goss said. “Proposition 2 had mainly to do with athletics and the ag initiative and we just felt like we ought to put it in Proposition 1.”
The advisory committee’s spokesman, Fred Skinner, said the move didn’t bother him and that the board reserves the authority to change the bond package as it sees fit.
“It isn’t an issue that would make me vote differently for the bond package,” Skinner said. “Really, it’s a small portion of the bond but for some reason it tends to draw more attention than other things.”
Skinner said the committee chose to suggest the separate proposition because it wanted to ensure passage of critical classroom and facility expansions.
“We wanted to be cautious and make sure [Proposition 1] got though, but really that’s probably where it [the laptop program] belongs— in the technology portion of the main proposition,” he said.
While the laptop program bears a relatively small price tag when compared next to other big-ticket items in the bond package such as renovations to the intermediate campus and classroom additions at the high school, Superintendent Wayne Rotan said the laptops will save money in other areas. There is still an overall out-of-pocket expense to provide the program, but the $1.5 million price tag is not a black and white number, Rotan said.
The district is already scheduled to replace 400 computers at the high school, an order that won’t be necessary if the laptops arrive. Additionally, Rotan said the laptops would allow four classrooms to be converted from computer labs back to regular teaching environments, a move he says will cut down on the need to add new space to the building and save the district roughly $215,000 per new classroom.
The laptops will also slash expenditures on textbooks as the program is designed to eventually provide all learning materials electronically.
“Textbooks themselves are very expensive,” Rotan said. “Students are carrying around $400 to $500 worth of books every day. I think that’s something everybody takes for granted until they go to college and buy their own and you realize the cost of those things.”
Middle school Principal Cindy Price, who has overseen the implementation of the program at that campus stood behind the idea, saying the learning curve was short but that teachers have now been trained and know how to integrate the laptops into their daily curriculum.
The laptops make learning an interactive, engaging process, Price said.
“In those textbooks that are online you can be reading about a battle in the Civil War and you can click on a link and have a little video link that they can see,” Price said.
Students are also learning to make presentations on PowerPoint and utilize other software that is commonplace in today’s workforce, she said.
“Last year we had them but now we know what to do with them and how we can use them more and more in the classroom,” Price said.
Middle school teacher Tom Richert he has been able to progressively increase his use of laptops in the classroom.
“There’s been considerable problems in the past but as we’ve met these problems we address them and things clear up,” Richert said. “Personally, the thing I like most about the laptops is that when you get them out, the kids are just more interested. Their eyes light up.”
Richert said he was “flabbergasted” when he heard there was community opposition to the program.
“This is the future,” he said. “If we don’t get them into this technology now they’re going to be behind.”
The district’s technology director, James Banks, said the key to getting the laptop program on track has been education—but for teachers, not students.
“The teachers came back and said we need more training in areas like integration,” Banks said.
The district responded by shipping middle school teachers to observe laptops in action at campuses in Irving and holding days worth of in-house training before the start of school this year.
“The first challenge we saw right off the bat was I think we just put the laptops out there and didn’t do a good enough job of training the teachers and informing parents on how they were going to be used,” Rotan said.
Other adaptations the district made included enhanced internet filters which include a feature that alerts administrators if a student tries to disable the filtering software—even when the laptop is at home. Textbooks are now loaded onto the computer instead of spread out among CD-ROMs, and a lightweight sleeve that allows students to slip their computer in their backpack instead of carrying a bulky carrying case are being offered.
Additionally, a more extensive handbook as well as a training video are being sent home to parents.
Banks said between 60 and 70 percent of textbook material has been eliminated at the middle school, and that number is continually rising.
Barbers Hill is on the forefront of what district leaders project will eventually become the status quo—a laptop for every student and all learning resources available through computers, which allow for more student interaction and more frequent content updates.
“Regardless of how people view it or do not view it, if we don’t get prepared now, in two to three years this is so going to roll out anyway and we’ll have to play catch up and that’s going to be even more expensive and time consuming,” Banks said.
For Joines, the question of the new technology is not a matter of if but when.
“What sets Barbers Hill apart is we have foresight and we are proactive on things,” Joines said of the board’s supportive position of the laptop program. “We want to be on the cutting edge. I don’t want to sit around and wait on someone to do something and us follow. I want to be a leader.”
+ + +
Early voting in Barbers Hill school district’s $43.8 million bond referendum continues from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Tuesday. The general election is Saturday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Precincts 4 and 10 vote at the administration building. Pcts. 5, 8 and 11 vote at the Cove Community Bldg. on FM 565 South.
+ + +
The cost for homeowners
According to estimates supplied by the district, the resulting increase in taxes on a home worth $100,000 would see a tax increase of $26 in 2006 and $13 in 2007 and 2008.
Taxes on a home appraised at $215,000 would increase by $63 in 2006, $31 in 2007 and $32 in 2008.
The average home value in the district is $119,000.