But that’s what some educators and experts see when they consider the current picture in many schools. Driven by an urgent need to make it possible for millions of students to learn virtually and fueled by tens of billions in federal relief cash, districts tripled or quadrupled their fleet of devices over the course of just one school year.
Many of those districts have embraced 1-to-1 computing initiatives and the changes to instruction, classroom management, and professional development that come with them. But in a few short years, the devices bought with federal emergency funds are going to be outdated or even stop working altogether, experts warn. Districts have different deadlines for spending various pots of federal funding, but the last of it must be allocated by September of 2024.
Many districts are not planning for that reality.
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What Schools Can Do Now to Ensure Their New Technology Lasts Beyond the COVID Cash Boom
By Alyson Klein — May 17, 2022 8 min read
Illustration of computers and peripherals in recycle bin.
F. Sheehan for Education Week/Getty
Billions of dollars in unanticipated funding for new laptops, tablets, 3D printers, and hotspots sounds like a district technology leader’s lucky day, not a slow moving train wreck.
But that’s what some educators and experts see when they consider the current picture in many schools. Driven by an urgent need to make it possible for millions of students to learn virtually and fueled by tens of billions in federal relief cash, districts tripled or quadrupled their fleet of devices over the course of just one school year.
Many of those districts have embraced 1-to-1 computing initiatives and the changes to instruction, classroom management, and professional development that come with them. But in a few short years, the devices bought with federal emergency funds are going to be outdated or even stop working altogether, experts warn. Districts have different deadlines for spending various pots of federal funding, but the last of it must be allocated by September of 2024.
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Many districts are not planning for that reality.
“I’m hearing from other CTOs across the nation that there are leadership groups and school boards that feel like ‘You’re good, you don’t need anything else,’’’ said Kelly May-Vollmar, the assistant superintendent of educational technology services for the Desert Sands school district in southern California. “It’s all fine for today, but a few years from now, about the same time the money runs out, we’re going to have a big problem on our hands.”
The complication goes beyond just the cost of laptops and tablets, added May-Vollmar, whose own district went 1-to-1 several years ago after carefully crafting a sustainability plan.
“You’re teaching teachers how to use [devices],” she said. “You’re teaching kids how to use them. You’re spending a lot of time and money. The investment goes far beyond the cost of the device.”
The time to start planning is now
Districts don’t usually go on a tech buying binge. Instead, school systems with a lot of hardware to manage typically have a set replacement cycle. For instance, they might swap out a quarter of their old laptops and tablets each year and replace with them new ones. That way, no student is typically given a device that is more than four or five years old, and the district can space out its spending over a longer period.
But the federal relief money—and the immediate need to help kids secure devices and internet capability in order to learn virtually—meant many districts purchased a slew of laptops, tablets, hotspots, even 3D-printers and interactive screens, all at once.
“They had to do the quick spend, and it was a lot of money,” said Diane Doersch, the technical project director at Digital Promise, a nonprofit that works to improve learning through more-effective use of technology. “But now, they’re gonna have to start planning: ‘How am I going to divide this fleet up intelligently so that I don’t have these high-spending years to replace the whole fleet at once?’”
If districts don’t think ahead, four or five years from now they may be “stuck with a whole bunch of devices that don’t work and no money for replacements,” said Doersch, who previously worked as a chief technology and information officer in Wisconsin.
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