Change in Chromebook Policy Coming to Middle Schools

Pictured: Broken Chromebook screens piled up in the repair area of Carbon School District’s Technology Center.

Carbon School District Press Release

After two years, Carbon School District officials decided that middle school students cannot keep their Chromebooks and take them home every night. This practice has not been cost effective for the district, and it has not proven to be in the best interests of the students.

Beginning on August 24, the first day of school, students will still use Chromebooks in class, but the devices will remain in Chromebook carts within classrooms at the close of each day.

Chromebooks were piloted as take home devices with middle school students at Helper Middle School two and a half years ago. Helper and Mont Harmon fully implemented take home, 1:1 devices in the fall of 2015. Chromebooks are intended to partially replace textbooks, and they are also vehicles for sending assignments home.

However, the damage and loss problem, which was small at first, blossomed this past year, causing the middle school principals and the technology department to reevaluate how the program was working. Some of the damage was accidental, but much of it resulted from students using the devices improperly and damaging them.

“I and the teachers at Helper Middle School are 100 percent in support of restricting Chromebooks to classroom use,” said Mika Salas, the principal of the school.

According to Phil Feichko, Carbon’s Director of Technology, the abuse rate was causing some real problems, including a ballooning of costs to the district. At the May meeting of the Carbon School Board, he and Seth Allred, principal at Mont Harmon, told the board about the problems they have been having with the Chromebook take home program.

“We are kind of looking at a refresh for next year and look at it from a financial standpoint,” Feichko told the board. “We have had about 350 broken screens this year.”

Not all of those broken screens came from Helper or Mont Harmon but the majority are from those campus’ and that age group. The district has non-take home Chromebooks and iPads in the elementary schools, and at the high schools the take home program has not resulted in the same kinds of problems.

“Compare it with the elementary schools where we have the carts where they store them overnight at the school, and we only had a few broken screens over all those campus,” he said.

“We also have to consider that when we begin school we have to pass them out and get them all set up with the students. If the devices are in classrooms in carts, they would be available the first day of classes,” he noted. “I think with that kind of a process the repairs on these devices would almost go to zero.”

He said he has also heard a lot of complaints not only from teachers and administrators but from parents about the fact that the Chromebooks out of class become distractions, often being used for things not related to school such as playing games and other activities.

He also mentioned that the fee that students have to pay at the beginning of the school year ($20) to have the devices would go away when they are eliminated from going home each night.

Allred also pointed out the large number of devices that need to be repaired.

When asked by the board about the homework situation that the devices were supposed to help with, Allred said that the ten period schedule at the middle schools has changed that dynamic and homework has been drastically reduced.

“In talking to teachers, there will be very little need for devices at home,” he said. “If there are projects or assignments that need that type of technology, most students have the equipment and ability to work from home. But, we also will make allowances for students who may not have computers at home, so they can still take Chromebooks home at the end of the day in those limited circumstances. That is a conversation we will have to have with those students and their parents.”

Digital homework assignments at both schools will be very limited, and students will have multiple opportunities to access devices at school.

Karen Bedont, the Assistant Principal at Mont Harmon, said that she has received calls from parents concerned about the way their students were using the Chromebooks as well.

“What I get is parents calling and being concerned that their kids are not using their Chromebooks for school work at home, but for games, emailing and sometimes inappropriate things and even using them to bully others.”

The schools use what is called a “white list,” which includes students who have restricted privileges with their devices because of past behavior.

“That won’t necessarily go away because they still can be inappropriate while they have them in class, but they will not be able to do that from home,” she said.

The board asked the district to contact parents through an official letter explaining how each school will handle the use of the devices in the future.