Dr. David Hopson
Labor Day, the traditional end of the summer and transition to fall with daylight hours declining, nights becoming cooler, and students’ returning to school. Just like the seasons, there are also changes occurring in the Gateway School District. From staff changes bringing new faces and fresh perspectives into the classrooms to operational changes, the district is changing to better meet student needs. Although many of these changes have been shared through news releases, let me highlight two with you once again.
The changes most likely to impact students in grades 7-12 involve the length of the school day. This change, essentially adding 5 minutes to the time students spend in classes, does not impact the bussing schedule but does allow the number of class periods to be extended from 5 to 7. By adding two additional class periods to the day, we are able to expand course offerings to students thereby providing additional opportunities for students to participate in elective offerings. This should prove beneficial to all students including those wishing to take a full academic schedule as required for acceptance into the most prestigious colleges, while still allowing them to participate in the arts and humanities, explore other areas of interest, and provide a more well-rounded education overall. Kudos to the teachers and their association for working with the administration to make this change a reality because this changes their daily routines, increases the number of classes being taught, and requires more work on their part.
In a small school system like ours, every change impacts the entire district. Changing the 7-12 schedule has ripple effects, even on the PreK-6 grades, especially in terms of sharing staff across the district. Thankfully our administrators collaborate well and, through their diligence, we’re able to continue moving forward without large disruptions in daily operations.
A major change in the PreK-6 realm is the move to a 1to1 Chromebook initiative in grades 3 and 6. After two successful sets of pilot Chromebook projects last year, we elected to move forward with a larger pilot program that entails providing Chromebooks to every third and sixth grade student in the district. The teachers involved in this project have already spent an extra day reviewing the program and considering how to best use these laptops and have asked for continued professional development around this implementation over the coming year. As a brief overview, Chromebooks are lightweight laptop computers that are capable of many of the functions of a regular laptop. These devices have limited memory and storage space on the machine and are designed to integrate closely with the Google application suite of programs and use the power of the Internet to store, share, and work on projects. They have improved dramatically since the first generation of Chromebooks and can now be used even without Internet access. In our original pilot programs, we found very little work normally done in the classrooms that couldn’t be done on a Chromebook. Due to the much lower cost of Chromebooks, we were able to expand our technology initiative without adding additional costs to the budget by switching from leasing Apple products to buying Chromebooks, using our regular technology replacement schedule. As we move forward with this larger pilot we’ll be able to better determine if the district should continue to move in this direction, in order to provide our students with the technology required to effectively function in modern society.
We’ll certainly keep everyone informed on the progress of these two significant changes in the district as we move through the upcoming year.
