Adams-Cheshire Will Ask Towns to Fund Laptops
 The School Committee will prepare a warrant article asking for funding for laptops. |
CHESHIRE, Mass. — The Adams-Cheshire Regional School District will propose the purchase towns purchase 130 Google Chromebooks for the elementary schools.
Committee member Regina Hill told the School Committee on Monday night that the technology subcommittee has prepared a plan to propose to the town to purchase laptops to aid the students in technology skills and allow more efficient PARCC testing.
"We didn't want to just go out and buy Chromebooks that we may not really need," Hill said. "We wanted to be upfront and honest and purchase what we needed."
She said Adams will receive 90 laptops and Cheshire 40.
The laptops are $247.11 each, which is the Massachusetts contract price for education and government. The amount for Adams will be $33,528 and for Cheshire will be $18,757. These amounts also include carts to transport the laptops and printers.
Superintendent Kristen Gordon said the school district also plans to purchase 60 more laptops with grant funds and donated money.
Gordon said, with the computers the schools already have, this should allow the district to test two grade levels at a time when the PARCC test arrives. Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers testing being considered for statewide implementation has to be done online.
She said these numbers will be proposed to the two towns for the consideration of a warrant article. Both towns showed an interest in purchasing laptops for the district.
The superintendent also proposed a new state mandated element of teacher evaluation that the district will have to negotiate with the teachers in their contracts.
She said the new level will be focused on student growth. She said the district must negotiate with the teachers and select three items that the state deems acceptable to measure this growth, such as MCAS scores.
"The whole idea is to place student learning at the center of the evaluation so it's your walk throughs and observing lessons, but also student learning," she said. "The idea is to recognize excellence; it is supposed to be a positive thing."
Gordon said if teachers are given top tier scores there must be information to buck up the grade. She said the state does not expect high schools this early and will audit.
She said this will change the way the middle school is structured next year. She said normally "teams" would be broken down by grade level and a singular teacher would only teach a subject to one grade level. Now teachers will teach the same subject at multiple grade levels so data can be compared.
"The state is pushing away from that because currently and for a while you only had one 6th grade math teacher for example," she said. "So there was no comparing or contrasting. You were an island and you were alone."
She said this restructuring will also help fill gaps left from proposed staff cuts because of budget difficulties.
Problems that could arise from this form of evaluation are transient students who could bring down a teacher's score because they were unable to educate them from the beginning of the year.
She said special education students could also cause difficulties for teachers because traditionally they have a slower rate of growth.
"We have so many teachers that welcome students with IEPs in the classroom, but their growth isn't going to be as fast as a typical child's growth," she said. "We know that but showing that on paper is a little scary."
Gordon said as a district, they will attempt to collect the data so it reflect any of these difficulties accurately.
Committee member Joshua Demarsico-Birkland said this data collecting will be trying on teachers and administration and is another example of an unfunded state mandate.
"Data crunching ... it takes somebody a long time to do that and other districts have positions where that is their job ... we don't have that," he said. "I believe there are teachers who are making more impact on student learning than others and to try to put it into a box is a hard with shrinking budgets."
Tags: laptops, PARCC, teacher evaluation, warrant article,
