Board Meeting (03-02-2026)

001Welcome to this evening's Education Committee meeting. If you would all please rise and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Well, we wanted to discuss how we're using various devices, well, laptops and Chromebooks and the like, for educational purposes in the classroom, and I think at this point I'm going to turn it over to the administration. Thank you, Mr. Briegel. So, if you recall, I can't remember if it was last year or the year before we had a discussion about our one-to-one devices, and we were asked to have another one focusing primarily on elementary use. And so today we're going to talk

002a little bit about how we use technology to enhance instruction in our elementary grades. I think this is a nice timing for it because we're coming off of our last Education Committee meeting, which was a celebration of all of the wonderful achievements of our children. You know, we continue to rank among the highest in the state, and it's in large part to all the work that our teachers and administrators and the hard work of our families are doing. So tonight will be a good night to hear about how our teachers are using technology in the classroom. And I want to turn it over to Dr. Marquis, who's going to take the show from here. Good evening, everybody. Thanks. I'd like to start by just saying thank you for having us and having an opportunity to

003talk about what devices at the elementary level looks like. We're really proud of the work that we've done, especially K-3. And I'll be honest with you, when devices were new at our buildings, there was a lot of conversation around them and specifically how we're going to use them effectively, right? There were a lot of conversations that we had with our staff about, you know, the reality of devices in the hands of our youngest learners. We wanted to be extra mindful of screen time for them. We wanted to be mindful of their needs and their readiness to use those devices. But most importantly, we recognize that nothing replaces the good work that our teachers do with the instruction and the teaching that they do in the classroom. So we really focused our attention on how can

004they support our teachers' best work? And that slide up there that talks about intentional use, right? I think intentional is a perfect term. We're very mindful of using them with intention to support learning in the classroom. I'm going to provide a quick overview of what it looks like in the classroom with devices. And then I know our teachers are kind of giving the 100-foot view, and then our teachers are going to be able to give a little bit more specifics of what that looks like. So I'm going to start with just how technology supports instruction. And the first thing I'm going to talk about is how the devices are used to help differentiate instruction in the classroom. And when you think about differentiation, we're talking about meeting all students where they're at individually. In a

005classroom of 20-plus kids, as you know, not everybody is ready for the same things. They all learn at different times. And our teachers do a really great job at providing whole group instruction and then identifying where they need to differentiate to meet their kids' needs. So some students might need enrichment opportunities. Other students might need some remediation of skills. And that's where those devices can be used effectively. If you walk into a classroom at Pleasant Valley or Bauer Hill, you might see a teacher working in a small group with students remediating a specific skill, but there might be a handful of other students using a device, you know, using a program, using tools within our curriculum or iXcel or other online platforms to help remediate or reteach the skills that the teachers are instructing in

006the classroom. So differentiation is key. We also use them a lot for assessment in the classroom. And that's beyond just our benchmark assessments that we administer three times per year in ELA and math. It might be a quick check at the end of a lesson. It might be, you know, assign a student a skill, again, through saw this or wonders. And then teacher uses that to guide instruction for the next day. So assessment can be immediate, provides immediate feedback. I think the other thing to consider, too, with the tools that we're using to differentiate and assess is they're high interest for our kids, but they're also immediate and providing the feedback for their learning and then also for the teachers planning. Skill reinforcement kind of goes along with the differentiation, but it's, you know, a

007tool that teachers can use in addition to paper and pencil worksheet. You know, the tools, the platforms that we are using are assigning kids skills to practice that they're learning in the classroom. And again, that can take the place of of a worksheet in a traditional style of learning at the elementary level. But I think going back to the fact that it is of high interest for them, gives them the immediate feedback is just another great way to practice that skill reinforcement. And I also think, you know, digital literacy is a lifelong skill. And when we're introducing our students to digital literacy as early as kindergarten, it looks different at every grade level. Right. Kindergarten kindergarteners are learning how to turn on their device. They're learning how to manipulate the touch screen and the mouse.

008But by the time they get the third grade, you know, they're using them a lot more sophisticated, using them a lot more sophisticatedly with respect to doing research projects or, you know, the Google Suite programs to create projects. So we build that up as the year goes on and we're teaching them those skills, lifelong skills as we go. I think it's important to point out with homework, though, that K-2, we really don't assign homework on the device. Homework is typically paper pencil at grades K-2. Now, if parents ask for other resources to provide support at home, we can offer them online resources, but a K-2, really not depending on the devices to assign homework. K-3, occasionally we will assign it, but same same thing. It's it's not as frequent. And we also will provide those

009opportunities for parents if they need additional resources for the children to practice at home. So I just kind of draw out that point, point that out. And the fact that, you know, really use them primarily in the classroom to support the teaching that's going on with our teachers, not relying on them for homework. And last, I'll just, you know, mention to kind of summarize and we can go to the next slide and the teachers are going to dig into this a little bit more. I mean, we're really focusing on differentiation, making sure that we're meeting kids where they're where they're at. We're focusing on that skill reinforcement. We're using them for assessment purposes. We have a number of great programs that we use for that, whether it be Savas from McGraw Hill or our Star

010Reader program. But we're also focusing on developing those age appropriate digital literacy skills. They become an important part of our daily routines and procedures. But I think to hear a little bit more specifically about what that can look like, because obviously there's a big difference between a third grader and a kindergartner. I'm going to turn things over now to our to our teachers so they can talk more about what that looks like each grade level. So kindergarten. Hi, I'm Karen Abrasny from Pleasant Valley and I'm Megan Myers from Bauer Hill. So kindergarten is all about learning routines, practicing those routines over and over. And we utilize the computers, I think, as just another part of that, to teach them basically how to do school, how to come in, how to use their materials, the computer

011being one of them. Using the computers like on a weekly, bi-weekly basis. It just depends on the students. Some kids we use them for enrichment. Some we use to support. We'll do whole class lessons. Let's see if we want to talk about like some specific websites we use. IXL is one, Starfall, PBS Kids. At Pleasant Valley we're using a cute one that is called Edshed where you can actually just move the letters to do word building, whereas before we would cut out the letters and, you know, move them ourselves. You can move them and then quickly delete and the kids enjoy that. It's fun for them and like Dr. Markway said, it's of high interest. Just to like go along with that, in Bower Hill we do Get Epic, which we use for comprehension skills,

012and it's really nice for our higher learners. They can actually take a little quiz after it. So it's good to kind of reach those higher kids, but then the lower kids that are struggling readers can listen to the story read to them. But IXL as well is probably our core program that we use for the kids because again you could differentiate that to the higher kids can try the harder skills while the kids that are struggling can just work on their letters and sounds and kind of build on those things. Hearing the sounds over and over again one on one versus us, you know, to the whole class. It's nice for them to get that like feedback pretty quickly if they know it or they need practice on it. As Kara said, we use the

013computers one to two times a week in kindergarten. We don't use them nearly as much as the higher grades. Our job is basically to teach them to log in, access these programs so that they're ready to do the more advanced things in first grade. We spend a whole lot of time learning how to use the badges. They have a Velcro badge that they use to log on to their computer. That is months. And then, learning how to get onto Canvas and learning, you know, where we can click to get to our different activities. All of that takes a really long time and I think we're just preparing them so that they can use it more, you know, in the following grades. Any questions? Do you mind if I ask a question? So I know in

014first and second grade they use laptops during library time. Does kindergarten also use laptops during any library time? We use them for a program called Accelerator Reader. So it's not for all students, but students that are high achieving and reading a little bit above the grade level. They will check out a book from a specific section. And then there are corresponding quizzes for comprehension that they can do. And that in kindergarten is kind of giving them a little bit more independence and responsibility because it's generally a first grade and on program. So some of our kids are using them. And then at Bauer Hill we're not. We don't take them to library. We do have like a similar type enrichment program for our readers, but it's just paper or pencil. We don't use the computers

015for that. Can you tell me what computer usage looked like pre-COVID? So we had a computer lab. And then there was a cart at one point where we would share and we would plug in I think the devices and we would bring the cart to your room. We also had three very old computers in the back of the room. But we all had an iPad that we could use for one-on-one work with some students. Pre-COVID I wasn't in kindergarten. I was in second grade, but it was very similar. Like we had the cart and I think that was just general. Thank you. We have our first grade teachers. Hi, I'm Danielle DiCarlucci. Thanks so much for having us. I'm Ashley Dorn from PV. So our first grade usage is a little more than kindergarten. We're

016really focusing on those literacy and math reinforcement aligned with our teaching instruction and the PA standards. There's a lot of really nice interactive, engaging things that we can add on with our daily instruction. IXL, we can assign assignments and things for the kids. We can kind of level them where they are. Yeah, I think we put a lot of effort into looking at curriculums that have a really nice balance. So we have especially ELA and math and social sciences like the big curriculums. We really dove deep into those and pick ones that really have a nice balance and are intentional with what we're having them on screen time. For example, in a 60-minute math class in first grade, as kindergarten said, you're going to have kids that are just on all different levels during a

017math lesson. Some get it right away. Some need some more one-on-one help or small group instruction. So a typical math class in first grade looks very much like a majority of the time where paper pencil, teacher in front of the room, working on dry erase boards and things like that. But what the technology lets us do is that at the end of a lesson, when we know what kids need more instruction, which ones are ready to maybe take it to the next level, that last five or 10 minutes of math class is great for differentiating those kids and letting the high flyers have some independence and get some more work. But at a higher level, while it gives us as the only person in the room that time one-on-one with either a kid or a

018small group instruction. And I think they really benefit from that. Yeah, I agree with that. Also, a big thing in first grade is the differentiation to support the student needs for enrichment or intervention. I really like to use it and utilize it for small groups. So when I'm pulling kids, I can have maybe my higher kids working with some of my on level kids or things like that. And I can kind of tailor whatever they're doing, whether it's like a super phonics, just going over more of the pattern that we're working on for the week, especially when we get into those really hard things like turning a short vowel into a long vowel or those variant vowels when we're doing a I and a Y and they have to know all of those different spellings.

019Things like that are really helpful with the interactive stuff that we do do. And then we also have extra math brain pop is a really great tool that we use for science and social studies accelerated reader. And that's a big one for first grade first graders. I mean, like I said, some kindergartners are ready to read, but majority of the first graders are coming in emerging readers. And it's really the year where they take off with their reading and accelerated reader is a huge program for that giving them independence. They're learning a love of reading because they're getting to choose their own books, they have their choosing their own path. So I think that's a big one that really takes off in first grade. And the other thing that we mentioned on here is when

020students are absent so not even just a covert outing or, you know, a weather outing but just being at home sick and I have three kids in the district and I know that sometimes when you're home sick. You're still functioning, and just because you can't be in school. Sometimes you're out for the count for the day but having access to these assignments and things really enables these kids to the learning doesn't stop. And if you're out for extended days like you're not going to fall behind especially as even my older kids. If we're home with a fever or something like that, they can kind of keep up so that their work isn't compounding and I think I can speak for the parents to that it's been really nice to not have to run up to

021the school to pick up things, or, you know, when they come back and they get this big dump of work that they've missed, they were able to keep up with it kind of as they were out of school. I think another thing to kind of going back to the differentiate differentiation of our reading skills. First grade is a huge fluency grade so we're going from knowing our CVC words to reading just a small sentence to then reading a whole like two sentences to three sentences. And then once we get into like our cadence and benchmark it's really nice for the kids to be able to get that extra fluency practice in stories that interest them not like so much of us giving them a story and being like okay here read this but they have

022no interest in it whatsoever so then they lose the comprehension. So I think having that engagement is really important to Sorry I have a quick question, like on average and I know every class is a little bit different but how often do you think in the day, your kids are on the computers. I would say, I mean, like Ashley said for math like that last like five to 10 minutes. It's very sporadic throughout the day, I kind of use my Chromebook time as an incentive time to like, if you get all of your work done or if we're finished and you need extra practice on something or there's something you want to read. It's kind of just a little bit of bits of time throughout the day. There's like no set time. Yeah, I would

023say the longest time in the week for a first grader would be our lab time because we do start lab in first grade. So, and I had it today I would say they were maybe on 10 to 15 minutes top during that period. But as far as the other core subjects, it would be a five to 10 minute period. Or like we've mentioned those high flyers if they're, you know, a really enriched child that needs things above the grade level, they might get a little more face time on that but it's very little. We use daily for sure. Yeah, but there are small chunks 510 minutes. Question, do you feel like there's for certain students. Maybe an opportunity for them to use technology more and maybe having a benefit or do you do you feel

024the opposite way that maybe it should be a little bit less. There's really no right answer I'm just curious like what you see in that in terms of being an enabler or maybe a distraction, depending on the kid or depending on the level. I think they're different and it can be a distraction. That's, that's where our job comes into play with classroom management and kind of picking up on that but I would say. And I think we teach, we used to teach together in the same building so I can kind of speak for both of us that we're very intentional with how we're using them. I would say right now I feel like we are kind of in a sweet spot you know we're not, we're still getting the tons of face time, a majority

025of the learning is with us face to face. But we're using it as an enhancement right now first grade is working on animal research projects. So they may be on it a little bit more right now as they're researching but it's very intentional, they're only going to one site to get their information it's not a free for all. But I don't think it's something you need to up their technology usage but I also think it would be a detriment to back away from what, what we have just can't put it back in the box we're just going to become a more digital world and I think we have to. Earlier just that digital literacy like we have to teach them responsible behavior on these technology devices, and to add on to that to the kids

026are really good about knowing what we can use it for what we shouldn't be using it for. And if we say like okay we're done with our Chromebooks like they're very good at just like closing it putting it away and like not bringing it out again. There's never like a back and forth like, or like, we have to take it or anything like that. First grade is really intentional with how we're using them and the kids are, I mean, they're in a routine. Yeah, they're in their routine and they know what's expected of them. And none of these are trick questions. I love that you're here. Thank you. And I think I'm going to be in the car driving home and be like, yes, okay. So can you think back before computers are in the

027classroom and that last five to 10 minutes of differentiation for math say, what did that look like. Quick checks used to be paper pencil, which was fine. It was just a lot more work on our end where we, it would take me a day or two to get that information back about the child, where this is instant, I have it, I know exactly where I need to go with what students which ones got it which ones didn't so it's immediate feedback versus the next day or two days depending on what it was. And, you know, another thing to piggyback your question with kindergarten was, what did it look like beforehand well we did have computer labs but we're so big now that we've lost those spaces, those are computer labs are classrooms now. So I

028don't even know where we would put a computer lab, if that was the route that we wanted to go I can, you know, at least fun Valley is busting at the scene so. Yeah. Welcome our second grade teachers. Hi, I'm Danielle Hackworth from Pleasant Valley. Hi, I'm Kelly Kuhn at Bauer Hill. I'm Lori Boehner also about our health. Okay, I'll start with the slides and you're going to see, like, a theme starting to emerge obviously that we are using the devices in a lot of similar ways that kindergarten and first grade are. You can see it's for independent and small group practice that we're doing in our classrooms skill reinforcement we're using some of those same programs, but we're also adding to them as well you could see ixl is one that I think every

029second grade classroom is using some classrooms are using boom cars which are like digital flashcards 99 math and extra math or math fluency programs that we can use as well. We are using our technology for differentiated assignments online programming, just like they were talking about in first grade it provides that immediate feedback when we're doing a quick check online, or using our practice buddy which is something through Savas that we have that the kids can use every single day it does provide us with that immediate feedback so I know which small group I need to pull for that last 10 to 15 minutes, and then I can do some hands on work with that small group, you know, giving that reinforcement that they need while the other kids are still working on meaningful assignments as

030well too. We use excel both in math and language arts, we use extra math each day as kind of like a little math vitamin every day to like get them practicing that fluency so that we can have them build those important foundational skills when we're getting to more complex math in second grade. And then you can also see that we are the first kind of grade level that's adding in that digital skill development of using the Google suites. in our second grade classrooms in our library. Every other week up our Hill, and that naturally lends itself to using Google Docs with our kids as we're, you know, spending a lot of time on that writers workshop process, all pencil paper and then maybe get that last point when you get to that final copy, using

031a Google Doc to kind of present your final copy or making a small presentation for Google slides, just introducing that because I know in third grade. They, you know, kind of go a little bit further with that as well. And then also we are able to use it for our benchmark assessments as well too. And that provides us with a lot of good feedback that we're able to use when we're doing group planning and just especially for hive time, and, you know, some of that more small group intervention that we're looking for to help our emerging readers and then also enriching those kids who need those enrichment opportunities. So anybody have any questions for us. I guess I do have one question is sort of goes through to all the K through two group. I

032feel like prior to COVID when computers were on a cart or a computer lab but thinking the cart setup. I know like the kindergarteners use it, you know, weekly or so but it sounds like first and second grade it is daily like I have wondered, is it possible to do a structure where you had like, you know, one set for you essentially one first grade or one kindergarten on first grade one second grade student would all share the tablet computers and second grade gets a Monday, Tuesday. Or get some Wednesday, Thursday kindergarten get some Friday some some type of setup, but at that case, then there would be several days where you would have been using them and would not be able to I just want to make sure I'm understanding that right. So, kind

033of speaking to that I think we do we at least I feel and my team at Pleasant Valley and you can speak for Bauer Hill we is something that's pretty imperative for us to be using daily. As Mrs. Doren kind of touched on, you know, getting that immediate feedback, we teach a math lesson every single day. And so sometimes if I am not able to get that quick feedback and decide well oh wow we all mastered that we can move on to a new lesson tomorrow or oh goodness, we really struggled with that we kind of need a whole group reteaching we're not going to do the new lesson tomorrow we're going to redo our lesson today, maybe take a different approach, split it up into smaller groups. And on top of it, we have

034a schedule per the building so myself personally I have students that leave my room and go to third grade for math. And so we all have to stay on the same structured schedule throughout the day so we all teach math from 930 to 1030. And so, you know, if it was a Monday, Tuesday situation I had the computers and my counterparts have them Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or however that breakdown would work. It wouldn't be something that we would be able to use with our routines daily so those routines would have to change each day which is difficult working with a population of kids who do better with familiarity and consistency and so you know there would be a lot of lost instructional time in terms of remembering oh today is a Wednesday we don't have

035computers today we do our paper pencil. So there would be a lot of hiccups in terms of that, I feel. So, you know, it would be difficult to share computer one or even two class sets of computers for a grade level just because of us. It's not as though half of my team teaches math in the afternoon and we could totally flip flop and it would be fine. Because it again, and there's a counterpart on my team who receive students from first grade to teach them second grade math and then she also loses kiddos to go to third grade math so you know across the building we're all on the same schedule would make it really difficult to share devices, you know, just not enough to have for everybody, a one to one. All right,

036thank you. Yeah, of course. And the other thing I think we're just going to talk about some benefits maybe that aren't necessarily, you know, written on there I think it's important to recognize that our population and the K to three grade levels is they're young you know and so you kind of try to cater to the things that are interesting to them or you know we've heard teachers come up here already and talk about, we want to read books that are interesting to them we want to read things that apply to their lives and, you know, when we introduce the technology I do understand the hesitancy in terms of becoming dependent and, you know, addicted to a technology right and I think that it's important to keep in mind to limit the amount of time

037that they're using it, but also we're very careful and, you know, intentional about what we're using it for. If there's something that we feel like, you know, is this going to benefit us to get it on the computer and do this it's not worth it squeeze in terms of even getting us, everybody get out your computers and everybody log in and go to this and go to this and go to this and you lose people along the way sometimes it genuinely is just easier to do things on paper and pencil so it's not as though we are. I can't imagine not having paper and pencil and doing everything on the computer that sounds horrible. So, you know, it is, it's all about balance. Right, but, you know, it is motivating for them to get on

038the computer I have some kiddos this year who struggle with reading and, you know, I can get them on and have them target some tasks that are more reading and ELA based, and they will focus in and sit and attend to a task for quite a long period of time, as opposed to giving them a paper and pencil task and asking them to sit there and do something that's difficult. On top of it everyone learns differently so we have, you know, our kinesthetic learners our audio and visual learners and being on the computer does help them say engaged because the kiddos that maybe can't read really well the math programs will read the question to them so it's closing a gap and helping them get to achieve the goals without being pulled down by things

039that maybe are harder for them. So there's a lot of benefits in terms of equity and inclusion that goes along with the devices as well. So they do benefit, not even just our, you know, learning support group but our whole group pushing kiddos as well if there's a lot of benefits outside of just, we can get quick feedback which is lovely but there's other things that come along with it that are really beneficial to all forms of learners as well. One other quick follow-up question, like for the math Ixels, will when students do them like the end of a lesson, will they, if they get a problem that's not something they would do mentally, would they normally have pencil and paper with them and sort of, you know, do the work on pencil and paper

040and then just enter it in to check or do they usually do it on their screen or how does that work? I think most of us still encourage paper and pencil so even because we always say you need to show your work so if you're even if you're doing that. Yes, absolutely. Even if we're listening to a story online, we still tell the students, you know, you need to be taking notes. This is important because it is a listening skill. And that is something, especially for second graders, you know, that they, they need to continue doing. And I wanted to address and go back to your question about the cart. I'm old enough and I know there's a lot of us here that still remember the cart. No offense against that. But I can tell

041you there was there was a lot of lost time, you know, with passing out devices to students, especially if you had, you know, devices that weren't working. And then now we have the ability to put in a help ticket, you know, if we need that assistance where before we didn't. So I see it as definitely a loss of time in teaching. But I also see the kids that when we were talking about you know kids that are reluctant and reading. I had a student who had a love for horses. And, you know, going to the library was going to be a big deal for them because it was hard for them to get down there and do the, you know, the whole checklist of finding a book. And so it was overwhelming. But we have

042a program called tumble books, and I was able to locate a whole thing on horses, and then it was immediate they were so excited they could go in. If they wanted to continue at home, you know they could still continue using it but again, K through two we don't, you know, give any homework or anything we just tell parents if you want that extra enrichment, you can use it at home. I know many of us say, don't use the device. When you go home, you know we, many of us have our own kids and I know that's a conversation I have to have with my own son that, you know, if you use your computer for school that's during the day, when you go home, you know unless it's something that's required. And extra math

043so that's another program when you were talking about ixl that we use as well and extra math gives you that immediate feedback so I had a student who was struggling. And instead of, you know, continuing on the Chromebook what we did and said we brought up flashcards. So, you know, I could see that immediate feedback that they were struggling and subtraction. But I said okay let's let's change it up a little bit let's pull up the flashcards and so then they were, they had that balance. So I think as teachers we use that discretion, you know, and we understand that there has to be that balance in the classroom. That explanation. Thank you and I appreciate everyone coming out this evening and spending the time to go through this with us much appreciated. I have

044one quick follow up question I kind of read it for all the K to two we've kind of heard the same quick assessment immediacy of the responses and I'm curious from an ELA perspective. How are these assessments being taken and then evaluated I mean math like I'm assuming it's a multiple choice they picked the right question. I mean what is there are they typing out any answers or is it again a multiple choice like what's the assessment like. So there's not necessarily like a quiz that we would be giving them at the end of a language arts lesson. Speaking from my own classroom personally I try to use I excels that match whatever skill I've taught whether that's a spelling skill a grammar skill. Some type of reading comprehension skill I Excel is really amazing

045if you ever had time to sit and take a look at it there's an enormous amount of skills and they really parse it out nicely. And so you know there's not necessarily a test that we're giving on the book and it's giving us feedback right away. We can do that. That's an option. That's not something that I tend to do. But you know those I Excel skills are coming up in terms of more of the phonics and grammar and spelling aspect of our language arts program and there are things online that we can get on there and do. Now it's not speaking to the immediacy thing to comment that you were referring to but we can get the kids on the books and again those kiddos who have trouble reading our online program will read

046the story to them. And so, you know, is it something that most of my kids need or even really want to do know because they can tend to read faster than what the book is going to read to them but my kiddos who struggle with dyslexia and who are reading below grade level. It allows them to still access grade level material without having necessarily all of the grade level skills that would be required for them to do that with just a book in front of them. So, personally, and feel free to hop in. There's not necessarily the immediacy aspect in terms of language arts that's coming in, as often as math that's why really not hearing about that piece as much, but there are a lot of technology components that we use throughout the day

047that do help to support the structured learning that we're doing face to face and paper console, just continuing to give them additional practice on the computers. You're speaking about a specific program we do use Accelerated Reader which I think kindergarten talked about too so you do have that immediate feedback. Plus, that is in line with our star reader so our star reader is what the kids are assessed on twice a year. So that is our benchmark which is, it's connected with AR so then as teachers we can look at that data, and we can say okay this child reading at a grade level the students reading at a third grade level. And that, that is immediate feedback in the ELA. I have two quick questions first approximate time like a student spends a day, and

048then the second time with your high program do you guys utilize computers within high, or is that just all paper format and books. Yeah, that varies hive is Bauer Hill pause time is Pleasant Valley it's all the same, same thing different name. So, you know we some of us. We do at Pleasant Valley we have it split up as Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and second grade is language arts pause high time. And then Thursday, Friday is our math pause slash high time. And so, you know, we sometimes will do computer based tasks. One, one thing my kiddos like to do is called ixl jam so we can get on all together and practice the exact same ixl skill and on my laptop, it'll pop up and show me which kid got which press questions right and

049which questions wrong. And then I'm able to say, you know, whole group at the same time immediately and that goes for language arts or math you can do those skills in either subject area. But there are some times where it's like no we need to practice our race response writing, and so we're going to read a story together and we're going to write a written response together. Or, you know, we're, I'm going to sit with you, one at one, maybe at your desk you're doing a series of tasks paper pencil but you're going to come back and read with me and I'm going to time you for your fluency. So that, that definitely varies a lot teacher teacher in terms of how they're breaking up that high slash pause time, but I would say it's

050definitely a mix of both. I also think it depends like what level of students you're working with as well. I have an enrichment group that I'm working with so I feel like maybe my group is working more with technology with Google sweet with Google Docs and Google Slides, and we're doing presentations where as an on level group as we're working with pencil paper working with actual books and stories that they're reading. I think it just really depends on what level of kiddos that you're working with. And speaking for the on level groups I know that we spend a lot of time reading passages will read stories together, but then we can take it a step further and do an extension lesson where they're on pebble go researching. So maybe we're reading about astronauts but then

051on pebble go they can actually, you know, research and make that connection to a real astronaut. And in terms of estimating the amount of time, I would say, cumulative over the entire day half hour, maybe that would feel like a busy day, 15 minutes of math. Yeah, 1520 minutes language arts probably very specific on what you're targeting, what you want to practice that day might be a phonic skill in language arts or it might be a reading comprehension still but you know I would say. A total of about a half hour throughout the day but that's not a half hour sit down half hour chunks here and there. Something else. Okay. I everybody keeps talking about ixl, and I was happy to see Mrs Bowden are here because my son had her so, which is

052great. And he loved ixl I do remember that. Is there any chance, but then I feel like the last few days I've gone down like some rabbit holes. Do you feel that ixl leads to compulsive use, and like they can't stop playing, and they want to engage for longer. And then you can comment on that again it's not your question at all. And then this might be a question for Adam, does, does, is it ever monetize like the longer our kids stay on the more ixl makes on the back end. No, there's no monetization associated with it and there's no advertisements associated with it. That is a law thing that they're not allowed to do in any way shape or form of those types of programs but no time spent on ixl does not equal.

053We're not on a clock like a taxi cab when it comes to usage it's just what our usages is what we just essentially pay for unlimited usage, and whatever they determined to be the adequate amount that's what we use. And you never see an ad. I mean, I had sell is not the most gamey in terms of visually aesthetically pleasing. It's really not. It's pretty much core basic, you know, we give you a question or an ask or a task, and there is a little box so mostly white screen with a teeny little bit of blue and yellow on it there's no pictures unless it's asking you to match a multiple meaning word to a picture that's you know matches the way it is not there's no levels that's not gamey there's no characters dressing

054up your characters changing your characters, none of that it's strictly just educationally focused. And so, it works well for us and being able to target skills really easily, the kids like it temporarily because they get to go on the computer and do something different that's not paper pencil, but because But because it is not super gamey, for lack of a better word, they're happy to be done with it when we asked them to put it away. They would be, you would hear about it. It's not one that sucks them in. I would say that is probably the clearest distinction from like a paper pencil task to the computer like it is as though you took a worksheet and typed the questions out onto a computer. The only benefit there is that when they put their

055answer in it immediately tells them your answer was right or your answer was wrong and if it's wrong it steps them through what they did wrong how to fix it and explains it to them. Yeah, it is not visually pleasing, really for them so they're happy to be done. No, no, not that actually quite the opposite my kids as soon as they get it. I cannot wait to get these down. When you miss a problem and your score goes backwards, they're not happy. And there is an ELA component. Hi, I'm Mary Beth Barnes and I teach Pleasant Valley, third grade, and I'm calling Gallagher and I teach at Bower Hill third grade as well. Do you want to talk first, you know, I want to address something about I Excel, because there's a component and

056I don't know whether they have it for K one, two because I'm in third grade for 39 years now. Thank you. There is a component where when Sean answers a question, if they get that question right, there's immediate feedback. Yay, good job. And wonderful. And of course the smart score goes up. But if they get it wrong, there's some options not only does it say oh you missed this one and take some of the smart score away. There are two options at the top. There's a tutorial that will go through why did you get this wrong. And there's also on many of the skills, a video that goes with it that will reteach the skill to the kid before they go back and try and do some more. And if they are using or utilizing

057those features of the I Excel program, they can get their smart score a lot quicker. And therefore it's a little bit more self rewarding. Also some of us give a little incentive because smart score 80 is considered passing, but a smart score of 100, and you get some extra points in my room. If you want, some of the kids are really motivated to get those extra dojo points or whatever. And so they want to take it to the 100 limit. And so that's why there's some competition for them to be able to score higher than just I passed this level. So that's like a little sidebar, but I just wanted to carry that up. You want to talk and then I'll talk. Okay, I just wanted to say like at least at Bower Hill in

058third grade, it more enhances in our instruction. It doesn't drive our instruction. So I was thinking today about my class today. So we just did finished a unit on fractions, which is a really hard skill in third grade. It's a brand new skill and all paper and pencil. I leave the instruction. The computer is not teaching the instruction at all. And then after that, we were done with that whole unit. It takes a couple of weeks to finish that whole unit on fractions. Then there's this thing, the program we have in third grade called Coach, and I actually print out the paper for them because I still believe they should be writing on paper and pencil. And my kids know like scratch paper is a good thing. You don't even have to ask for it.

059You go and get it, whether you're using a computer or not. And they know when they take their state test that they're going to be able to use scratch paper too. So I'm trying to teach them to convert that problem you see online onto scratch paper. So for instance, today they did a coach and it was on fractions and I get immediate feedback. Unlike when before COVID, I'd have this huge line and I'd be like checking them real fast as fast as I could. Immediately I can go, these three students need to come see me and I can work with them and fix whatever the problem is. That's what I love. I just love that I can have that immediate right away and then I can work with those kids like right away. Like before

060COVID, there'd be a big line and I'd have to wait till the next day and I maybe not even be done checking. And no, I specifically can look through the problems and I can get more problems that they're having problems with and work with them on that. Also, I wanted to speak a little bit about the ELA part too. So a lot of unfortunately when we give our tests at Bar Hill in third grade, and I know in other grades do, it's never like your formal test is never done on the computer because that's not how we're teaching the kids. We're teaching the kids how to annotate the text. Unfortunately, when they go to take the PSSA, they cannot annotate on the text because it's on the screen. So we're using a program called it's

061free called Readworks where we show them how to use that and we show them the little things they can do like highlight. They can't annotate but we're teaching them how to like maybe take notes on the side too. So I just want to stress that paper and pencil is still so so big. And I believe that's, and there's a lot of research that shows like the kids should be using paper and pencil you don't. So that's like the technology part is great and enhances instruction but it definitely doesn't drive the instruction. So, as far as responses in the LA. One of the things that they do in third grade that is really beneficial for the kids and for myself is when we are using some of the Google tools. When they are using Google Docs

062they share the document with me directly, and they share it with me as an editor. And so as they are typing. I can be right on my device as well and say, okay, you need to add a better conclusion to this, or this doesn't make sense or. Or, or redo this part, and I'm giving them immediate feedback and it's motivating them to want to type better and and produce better and to create better in writing. So, I think it's really been helpful in that respect do we do that all the time. Absolutely not. We do it maybe once or twice a quarter, where they are writing something on the Google Docs and sharing it with me, and I'm sharing it back with them but then they are so excited to be able to print that

063out and have something that they have created that is two or three paragraphs long, that is something that is quality work. Oftentimes, third graders do not want to edit, they do not want to revise, they'll do, they'll write their first draft, and they are done, even paper pencil, they don't want to do it. But on the computer, I can get them to revise much easier. So that's that's been helpful. Of course we do all of these other things that the other grades said and using it for immediate feedback but I just want to talk about something else. There's nothing that motivates these kids like the computer. We get on the computer to play like a Kahoot game. The Kahoot game takes maybe three minutes. It's not a long process, but I can, like I'll just

064tell you what I did like two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, we started fractions. They didn't have a clue what a fraction was. I put a Kahoot game, five questions up. They're like, oh no, what's a denominator? I don't know this. And then now they want to know what a denominator is. So what I'm teaching them, they're so excited. They've asked me like 47 times, can we play that Kahoot game again? Because now they know the answers. And they're really excited to show me that they know the answers. So it's just a way to get them into a topic, get them into, get them excited about something. It's not all day long. It's five minutes here, 10 minutes there, 15 minutes maybe tops, and that's it. But it is motivating and it's getting the kids

065excited about their learning. And that's why I love it. I'm done now. Any questions? And that's what's kept me in this. Actually, I have a question for all of you. You've mentioned several tools this evening that you use in the classroom, whether it's pencil and paper, flashcards, dry erase boards, certainly the devices. How would you compare student learning and achievement now with what it was like before the students had the devices in the room? I personally think they're more engaged with the devices. It's easier for me to get them to buy into an activity if they know later on, like after I do a whole group instruction, that they're going to be able to work on something. For instance, multiplication facts. So in my classroom, that's a huge thing in third grade. You got to

066know your facts before you leave third grade. So we have this thing, it's called hiking through, a lot of all the Bauer health third grade teachers use it. It's either called Pond or hiking through your facts. And so it's all on canvas, and it's a time test because they take physical paper. It's not a grade or anything, but it's a way that they can practice their facts. They all want to do it. They all want to be, and in the back of my room I have something tangible where they put a sticker when they finish that level. Before I used to do, it was pizza facts and it was on paper and pencil. And again, I had to check it. So it was an immediate where they could bring me their screen and be like,

067this is Gallagher, I got 60 problems in this amount of time. Oh, you passed that level, move on. Some of my kids are done with hiking, a majority of my class by this time of year is done with hiking through their facts. They are so engaged, so much more engaged. I really enjoy technology. Personally, I know it can be addicting, and I've read all the research on technology, so I do try to make sure with my class that I'm really intentional about what I do. But it really, I think, enhances, they want to do it more. They are more excited about it. And then you do have some kids that really don't like it, but that's where we come in as teachers to kind of, you know, give them an alternative to that, or something

068that doesn't match their learning style, then we find something else that works for them. But I love it as far as engagement. I don't know how the rest of you do. Practice makes perfect with any skill. And if you think pre-devices, you would maybe have... Thank you. Practice makes perfect with any skill, right? So pre-COVID, when we didn't have the devices, you'd have a worksheet that had 10 problems on it, maybe, right? And that might be great for some kids, but the sheer number of practice for whatever skill that we're doing by using these technology devices and programs, they're getting, I mean, just way more practice with whatever skill that we're doing than I could ever come up with as a human and ever put on a packet for them. And nobody, not even an

069adult, wants to be handed a packet this thick of, you know, problems to do or practice to do, where they're getting that practice with whatever skill that we're doing, and it's just, we're only human and there's only so much you can fit on a piece of paper. I think that that's a huge benefit that I see them getting more practice pre-COVID when we didn't have the devices. I'm going to kind of go along that same lines. I think when you start to look at, in our district, how successful our kids have been throughout the year, when we look at those standardized assessments, and I mostly see the PSSA scores, right? And we look at both of our elementary buildings, and our kids are so successful on these standardized assessments, and we can all have our

070opinions about love and hating them, right? But at the end of the day, that's an assessment that all of the kids in our state take, and when we look at how our kids are falling into the proficient and advanced categories, I think that it speaks a lot to what we're able to do in the classroom and the tools that our district is able to provide for us, that we're able to support the kids and challenge them where they need to be. I think the kids that we have coming through now are even more benefited by having technology because we're able to push them appropriately and support them where they're needed, and every kid is getting exactly what they need all day long, as opposed to we have this half hour of time where we can

071split it up and support you and do the best that we can, but that's all we've got. We're now, we can do that fluidly throughout the day without a ton. It does take effort on our part to set up these things and to teach the kids, but it's not a ton of time in our day to day that we're having to apply to be able to make sure that the kids are getting what they need when they need it as often as they need to have it. So I think that, you know, we can stand here and tell you what we see in the classroom and you guys are more than welcome to come in and check out what we're doing every day, but, you know, and the kids would love some new people. But,

072you know, I think that it is is really a testament to look at black and white scores. I mean, the numbers and the statistics don't lie. And I know that's something that a lot of us here, it's just easy. It's a tangible, right? And when you look at those things and you see how successful we are, I think that everything that everyone has stood up here and told you and the people that aren't here today, we speak for them. And, you know, we have a lot of really good routines and procedures here in place in our district, which we're very, very fortunate and lucky to have. I've worked in other districts where we don't have those same things and I see what those kids are capable of, but it's so hard to get them there

073without the tools that we have here. So I think that technology is really important. I just have to add one more thing. There's been a shift in the kids' perception. When we got the devices, they were toys. It was something to play on. And now they're tools. It's something to use to help you to learn. It's something to use to help you produce in the classroom. So that mindset with the kids has changed. And I think that has made all the difference for how effective they are in the classroom, because it's not a distraction from education. It is an augmentation to it. I'm done. Thank you. If I could ask a question. I appreciate everything that you shared about the merits of technology. I think everybody's doing a great job of leveraging it. But I

074didn't hear anybody express any concerns or challenges with the technologies. I don't know if that's because none exist, in your opinion, which is totally fine. But like, is there anything that you're concerned about? This goes out to everybody, whether it be, you know, the devices themselves, the content of the applications, the usability of the applications, just anything in general, observations that you might like to share about your experiences or the students' experiences with those? As far as I think there's a lot of behavior management that goes in that. For instance, like today, at the end of the day, my kids were coming in from Hive, and some of them had computers at Hive, and they want to get on the bus and have like a certain game on there. But they know that I don't

075allow them to get that ready for the bus. So one child was getting that ready, and then they lost privileges. So there's like managing that sometimes, like, but that's a really small thing for all the benefits that I see. As far as if you're using it correctly. And, you know, like I said, paper and pencil is the biggest part of my classroom and hands-on and instruction. But that's just an added engagement and bonus and makes my instruction better, I think. Again, I appreciate everyone coming and speaking tonight, going through this. It's definitely helpful, I guess. One question I have is, are there, and this goes out to everyone who spoke, anyone who wants to answer. And as Kathleen would say, not a trick question, are there any improvements that you would recommend, just from what

076you see in your classrooms and like how we implement and how we use the technology? Are there any tweaks that you've thought to yourself, like, man, if we did it this way, we could see some, you know, some different improvement? Is there anything that we could improve? Is there anything like that anyone wants to share? I'll just say this is my own, I'm not speaking for anybody but myself. I think that Adam does a really good job of filtering a lot of the sites that can be concerning and can get kids to places where they shouldn't be. I personally feel like a lot of times when I've had kiddos doing something that they're not supposed to be doing on the computer, it's not in my room, it's at home. And so, you know, those filters

077that Adam and his team put in place function still at home. But something that I know we do in both of our elementary buildings is we're not, you don't Google things. You don't go on Google, you go to Canvas and you go to things that we link. If there's something you're curious about, you ask an adult. But all that to say Google is not blocked and it's really not feasible for it to be. I just wonder if there's something that we're able to do where we block or force these computers to just shut down at home. And I know that becomes a nightmare in terms of certain grades of certain homework. I know K2, we don't. These are educational devices, tools, as Mrs. Barnes shared, you know, so I think that whenever I do see

078issues and I'm not perfect, I'm human, the kids try things, right? And you're like, why are you on Google? You know, why are you attempting to search something on Google? It happens. It happens. There's 22 of them and there's one of me. However, I think that whenever they have that free rein, completely unstructured time on the computer, that's not happening in our classrooms. But that is happening when they go home because their parents are trying to make dinner and they, well, I know how to get on the computer and I know how to log in and I know how to sign in. And so they can take those liberties at home that they're not able to take here. And I think that personally for myself, like my daughter is only two, but I think about

079that this is not going away. You know, so I understand the detriments of being on technology, especially as an adult, you know, like knowing to set it away and I don't need it anymore. But the kids don't understand that there's a downside to it. They only see upside. So I think it would be an interesting conversation to have in terms of technology and what we're able to do in terms of like, you can go on X, Y, and Z websites. Other than that, your computer is pretty much unusable at home. Again, just food for thought, something that I've been thinking about, but that's that would be my biggest wish, I think, because we have a lot of not a lot of issues. We have issues when they come up. It happens at home, usually. Appreciate

080that. Thank you. I think also to piggyback off of that I think the biggest concern and K and one, please stop me if you think I'm wrong but this is really my own personal opinion but I'm a lot of K and one students, if their Chromebook isn't charged like I really liked when we would have the carts, and we could just plug it in, and then it was set aside and it wasn't in their desk and it wasn't in their book bag, and it was just easy like okay go grab your iPad or go grab your Chromebook and it was just ready and usable. And I feel bad when I give those incentive times in the classroom, and then sometimes like their Chromebooks not charged, or they're going to miss out on something. I think

081that immediate like being having your Chromebook ready and to go during the day, which Adam you always do a nice job with getting us what we need when things are broken but um, but I think it's very important at K and one, because we don't use them for periods of time. So to have that immediate like let me just grab it, go do a quick phonics lesson and then we come right back and then we're back to the instruction, engaging small group, all of those things that we do in first grade. So just keeping the Chromebooks charge, I think it's like the biggest challenge that we see at the first grade level at least. Thank you. Okay, before I, I'd like to back up a little bit, ma'am you it looked like you might have

082been about to come to the microphone when another different. Okay, just, just. Okay. Just wanted to give you the opportunity. Thank you, ma'am. Before I get to the key takeaways I know I speak for Dr Marcus. We want to thank our, our teaching staff for coming tonight and speaking so passionately I mean that was obvious. You all know what you're doing, and you're highly skilled at being intentional with our technology so thank you for sharing that with everybody. Nobody else could have done that better than all of you, so we appreciate that. So, as we go through these key takeaways, our student devices are used as a tool. Our teachers like I said are highly skilled at determining which one of those resources for online use would be appropriate for the lessons they just taught,

083we will always be. Our teachers will always provide that direct and explicit instruction first that's our first line of teaching our children, but they know how to enhance their instruction or to extend their instruction with the use of our technology. And part of that is being intentional like I said but also development, developmentally appropriate just like our, our reading and our math skills follow a progression of skills so does our digital literacy starting with kindergarten and going on up to prepare them for future school years but also as they go out into society. We also are highly skilled and using our technology whether it's for differentiating remediating, you know the kids that need more support but also extending for our students that might need enriched. So there's purposeful thinking through what technology we're going to

084use for that. Our paper and pencil work that we do is the most the majority of what we do every day that's important to state because there's two different skills there there is, you know, being able to annotate text one of our teachers talked about that and highlighting and having their hands on that information, but they also have to be skilled and using online technology to go through their life. It's just part of what we do these days so I think they did a very nice job of communicating that to all of you. As you can see there's a lot of resources and they know how to pull the correct resource and that's the key to this is the appropriateness and the intentionality of what they do every day. Any other questions for anybody. I

085do have a question for you guys in your subset of students that you have, do you have any students that are behavioral or have ips that they're in, you know not recommended to use computers and how do you handle those currently or is it just the teachers understand that they're not ready for that and they kind of like. I think it comes down to classroom management I forget one of the teachers talked about you man, managing that in the classroom and all of our students have the devices they they use them I mean it might be a consequence of they misuse them. But our teachers do a great job managing behaviors in the classroom and if anything becomes problematic. We talk as a team to address those concerns but we don't limit access to them,

086or prohibit access to them. And I'll just add to that they, they set the expectations from the very beginning. And you know that when you walk into their classrooms like those expectations already set for the kids so we're proactive with that, and then if there's like Dr Mark was said if there's something that we need to step in for them, then we do and the teachers are great and doing that for our kids. I think to add one thing about it. I mean really it removes barriers for a lot of our kids that they can actually access the curriculum and understand it by having the technology. When you look at it that it removes those barriers, like some kids maybe we have have through technology, maybe only read it a second or third grade level

087but they now comprehend at an eighth grade level, because we've had technology that they could access because it read it to them. And that is really, you know, made learning more accessible for our kids with eyepiece. So I'm going to turn it over to Mr Spencer. Before we do that we also encased, we were asked to focus on primary but we have our middle school and high school administrators here. Thank you. You're good. If there's any questions for. Again, we were asked to focus on primary but we asked them to come if there were any questions for the middle school or high school. We'll go on to device deployment. So I think before we dive into device deployment a little bit I want to thank again our teachers for coming today and talking a lot

088about what they do in their classrooms. This is a very extensive and while I don't have quite as much experience as Mrs Barnes over there with the 39 years. I've had the pleasure of serving this district now for 13 years. And I've seen it both pre and post coven and how our deployments have been, and I've seen it at a cart deployment and I've seen it at a one to one deployment and a lot of the challenges that they go through and talk about with cards are things that that are very real when experience like a cart if you share it among three or four rooms, what tends to happen is damage actually tends to pile up more. We wait until the majority of the devices are broken before we're asking for a fix usage

089during the day actually by the end of the day all of the devices tend to be unplugged and uncharged is that probably a very good statement there. So by the end of the day, the teacher that had signed up for it for that in period in many cases doesn't have the ability to use a full complement, because they weren't charged or connected the way that they were supposed to be. When we've done carts overnight as well we've had power outages, or the carts were unplugged overnight, and then they weren't accessible all until they at least got an hour to two hours worth of charge for those staff members so it does create barriers and challenges at times in the classroom, but I think that we're a little thankful for that we don't have to deal

090with those things. Currently, after 2020 though when we were a one to one deployment school district. Things change for us and at that particular time we purchased devices across the spectrum from K to 12 to be able to meet the needs that were expected of us during during the covert time. Now, from an operational standpoint we all knew that that was not the best way about going about things and typically you phase devices in as you do a deployment like this, but we did what we had to do to satisfy that requirement so in 2425. That was our first opportunity to actually start thinking about a refresh program, and what that was going to look like here in the district. So as we develop that plan we came up with what you see up there

091currently and the 2526 school year this is what it would look like. Students, beginning in 2425 receive a new device in second grade, sixth grade and ninth grade students in kindergartens through grade five use Chromebooks and students in grades six through 12 use Windows devices, and what you can see is I just highlighted those refresh points that you see there, as well as the age of the device that is currently in place here in the district in the 2526 school year, as well as what it would look like if we stayed on this current path. As we start, if we did a similar refresh for next year. So we would refresh again at the second and sixth and ninth grade levels, and we would still have some older devices available to those students. Being at

092the eight year mark, and that is a long time I see Mr Lynch's face there. That is a long time to be running any of those types of devices, we run into issues when it comes to parts availability, just durability of devices over those times period because quite frankly they're on the hands of children. And they're not exactly gentle with those devices at times so we have to be aware that myself handling a device is very different than a sixth grader or seventh grader handling a device so life expectancy. What's always going to be middle school. It's very different than when we look at those things there. We go above and beyond here in the technology department for how we work on these devices and how we make them last. Most school districts do not

093do what we do but we actually take the devices that have reached a certain repair level of a cost, and then part those good. We take the good parts from those devices and reuse them in our repairs, to be able to get extended life out of those devices so we don't just recycle units we actually take them reuse screens reuse keyboards reuse power buttons whatever is workable. We're using those devices to fix those ones that you see in K one, two, four, five, 11 and 12 so we're not out constantly buying parts from third party vendors we're using what we have and maximizing our capabilities. So we work at two ways right now and part of it is because we do all of the break fix on the devices that are not currently under the

094warranty system that Lenovo has because we're prohibited from doing that work because we're not certified. We are in the process of certifying right now to get the ability to do those repairs in house. It is a lengthy process. There's a lot of learning and testing that has to be done by our technicians in order to be certified for that. And they're trying to do that while we're all while in the process of supporting our students on a day to day basis. So we're about there to that point where they were able to start doing a lot of the work in house, and we will do that but we will supplement with an outside with the outside entity as much as we possibly can to try and get devices back in a fast manner. That's one

095of our challenges that we face on a daily basis is getting devices repaired quickly and getting them back into the hands of our students based on the repair that we have in some of our buildings. Okay, so this is what it would look like if we stuck with our current plan we would continue to replace the devices and grades to six and nine grade to we would continue with the Chromebooks and grade six and nine, we would continue with the windows devices. Go ahead and go to the next slide. As we started to work through some of the possible scenarios that are associated with refresh brands we looked at a couple different ones. And one of the ones that made the most sense for us made the most sense for us as we started to

096look at our deployment was what if, instead of doing windows devices in the middle school area, we switch that over to a Chromebook look. And what we would do is continue to refresh in the second sixth and ninth grade levels. But now we would begin to start running Chromebooks from grades kindergarten, all the way through eight, it would take us three years to make that full migration to grade eight because we would let the students in grade seven and grade eight continue to run with their windows devices until they hit the high school. But at that time, at the eighth grade period once we got through that third, once we got through the three years, we will be Chromebooks all the way K through eight. But nine and 12 would still say windows devices go

097ahead next slide. One quick question on that and Mr. Skorsky I guess for you is in the middle school, what is the difference between the two devices practically speaking for how the kids use them. Honestly, we really wouldn't have to make many more adjustments if we went to a Chromebook model than a windows model, all the same applications, minus just Microsoft Office, but we've been able to supplement that with our Google drives and Google programs. So, for us it would be a minimal change at our level, a little bit of adjustments that we'd have to make but it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be comprehensive. I guess one other I was going to ask about this later just knowing that the middle school kids seem to be the highest rate of damage to computers versus other

098schools and I have a son there so I understand. I didn't want to put it on. I guess, does one of the computers hold up better than others for understanding that's the biggest damage point you know which one last better in middle school. It's sort of a military grade book, middle school across the spectrum across the nation is a challenging space to do it and a lot of cases it's not about devices holding up better it's cost to deploy and cost to repair. And the Chromebooks are a cheaper option to be able to deploy and repair. And at this particular point, because of what's going on with artificial intelligence and hardware availability. It's easier for us to get Chromebook parts than it is for us to get Intel windows parts. If you're paying attention to

099what's happening across across the world with artificial intelligence Intel is a huge player in the artificial intelligence data center fields and they are prioritizing their resources to building out artificial intelligence. So it's easier for us to do the Chromebook deployment. As we look at all of these different solutions we spent a great deal of time looking at what it would do to our current educational offerings and the software packages and the learning packages that they use in those classrooms. And what we found is that it would be a slight change to the educational capacity, while getting an approximate savings of about $33,000 each time we did that replacement and when I say slight change to slight change to the educational capacity. Part of it is because many of the vendors that we have worked with

100in the past that required us to use an installed client on a PC have now switched to a web based version web based version so it's allowed us to move to a Chromebook portion of it. And in the middle school, we do have teachers that use office exclusively but they don't use office features that are not accessible via the web version as opposed to a client that's installed there. So it really would have no practical difference. Yeah, I think if you ask that question a couple years ago, a lot of people would be very nervous to make that switch but we've become really accustomed to using the Google software and drives that it would be extremely minimal at this point. Okay, thank you. The other thing too is, it's a little bit easier for us

101at the technology level but also at the teacher level to use a tool that's provided for our staff members through the securely sweet that we use to do filtering and the one is called securely classroom. So to help keep students as they're all shaking their head right now. Sure that securely classroom gets rave reviews from teachers because it allows them to hyper focus students on what they want to focus them on by locking down the device, preventing them from going to any other resource while they're actually signed in to their device and they have the Google class, I mean the securely classroom piece turned on, so they can push only specified websites. They can only put they can push specified resources they can actually lock down students screens, they can blank them out if they

102need to there are lots of options associated with the package, and you can see their screens it's a little bit jittery. But there are no more than two or three seconds behind what the students are actually trying to do. So that's alternative plan number one, go ahead to the next slide. Alternative plan number two looks a little bit different. It still continues to build off of the dual operating operating system piece that we have, but we would change what our refresh rate looks like so instead of being a two year refresh, we would actually move that out to a five year refresh period. So students will only receive a device in grades three and eight students in kindergarten through grade seven would use Chromebooks students in grades eight through 12 would then move to Windows

103devices. And what you see there is what that that refresh period would look like next year, based on that type of deployment and you're going to notice there are lots of asterisks associated with all the numbers that you see there, especially with the older ages. That's because we have just done a refresh in grades two, and nine. And what we would end up doing you're taking devices that we have just refreshes you'll see that there's repeat numbers associated with them they're like, there's a one year old and then there's two twos. What we would end up doing is repurposing those devices that had just been refreshed in those grade levels and moving them to one of the older grade levels. So for instance, with our Windows devices, we actually know that our seniors have the

104oldest devices going into next year. That would be us taking some from a seventh grade period and moving them to 12th grade to get them back into a more modern machine. That is a better performance. Same thing that we would do in third grade. They already have a device that is considered fairly young. We would then take that device and repurpose it to another grade level possibly grade six, or possibly grade five, and deploy that there to make sure that those students have a more younger device in their hands. So that's why there's asterisks there we would have to talk about that as a collective to determine what those entry points actually are. Go ahead. Next slide. So we talked about what they would receive, but I think we need to talk about what the

105implications are if we make those if we make those adjustments. Expanding the Chromebooks K to seven and a reduction of the device refresh with new devices and third and eighth would slightly change the educational capacity, but it would extend the life cycles. This plan would generate approximately $195,000 in annual savings. Go to the next line. However, there's risks associated with all of those adjustments. What we do is, yes, it is a savings of $162,000 over alternative one, but what it does is it takes us to the end of what we would consider to be a usable life for some of those devices. Yes, we are running devices that are seven and eight eight years old at this particular point, but there's a difference between running them and running them effectively to we're getting to the

106point where parts are becoming harder to come by, especially being produced by new manufacturers. So for us to be able to keep some of these devices in service, especially the commonly broken devices like palm rest, motherboards and screens. Eventually, our supply, not only with us but also with our external vendors and third parties are going to dry up. So we're going to be in a position where it becomes hard for us to get the parts to be able to do with device related device reliability is going to degrade as we extend those pieces out as well. And battery life is something that we have to deal with as well. Right now under our current warranty plans batteries are covered for the for the duration of the warranty. But as devices get older battery life naturally

107degrades so they're just not able to charge all the way to 100% you're only going to get 50 60 70% and then we have to replace them. We just have to understand that those types of things are going to be things that impact us moving forward as we stretch life of those devices. Okay. So right now we haven't yet to this point our biggest challenge ends up just being us not being able to refresh devices, as much as we would like to at times. Quite honestly recalling all of our devices and giving them a good a good refresh over the summer is just not a feasible thing with the staffing and the way that we have things set up the cleaner we keep the operating system, especially when students come in and say hey my

108device is running really slow. Our natural point at that point is to reimagine the device and just basically get the operating system running pristine pristine, and then we're typically okay with that. Our challenge actually becomes third party vendors more than anything else. So, for instance, our biggest browser that we use here because they give us that gives us the deepest insight and deepest integration and support is the Google Chrome browser. But the more that they actually develop that browser, every tab that you open up requires more and more memory which can slow things down. What we do is we teach students about having 55 tabs open. And I'm sure everybody in the audience if I were to go home and look at your computer, there are probably 55 tabs open the more those tabs are

109open the more system resources are used. I say that because I'm guilty I have 15 open right now. We educate students on just how to try and minimize and streamline those devices to make sure that they're performing correctly. The biggest thing we also see with that is just restarting the device. We have some students devices that have been on for 30, 60, 90 days, because they believe just closing device is the same as shutting it down and it isn't so education and getting our staff members to be ready, getting our students ready to, to responsibly use those devices is a big piece that we have there. But we haven't seen the performance like you have in certain spaces. If we tried to run cat on those devices now wouldn't work. So, there's a considerable amount

110of time of spending time breaking screen. Sorry, breaking screens is just what I'm used to saying at this point, fixing keyboards fixing screens fixing cases. The challenge is because we have the surplus of the parts because we have things available to us, the cost of the part and even the time baked into it still doesn't really equal the cost of doing a rugged eyes because those rugged eyes devices tend to be a lot heavier as well. So if I went with a full rugged eyes PC, they tend to be seven to eight pounds as opposed to a two to three pound device that we have in our students hands. We put a clamshell case on it right now. It does help with some of the side impacts and they are gorilla glass. Our biggest challenges

111are the ones that are direct impact so whenever a student takes their device and puts it in a backpack and the water bottle is directly on top of the screen and then they put it in the car or throw it in the car or lob it in the car. It tends to place an impact directly on the center of the screen, and then it smashes it from the center side or it pops the screen all the way out for us. No rugged eyes piece is going to actually stop that because we've had rugged eyes here that we've used for our HVAC people, and they've had the exact same problems that we've had with with that they're just pop out. It's a challenge. This is a learning moment for me. So, the devices and the software

112so we contracted with the same company for for both of those or do we contract out separately for each different software plus device. So the devices we are working with one vendor right now for these two year refreshes the software. It really just depends on what subject we're teaching more than anything else. So for us for media at the high school it's Adobe and we work through the intermediate to get consortium pricing for that. You've got accelerated reader that's renaissance learning every package that we use comes from different vendors. So depending upon who we're using and what courses your child is taking, they may look different depending upon. So they're, they're definitely different. I know this is for, but since we're talking about it, is there any way we can get like an overall cost

113of device cost for software cost for everything. I think we could come up with something. It's, it may not, it's, there's some variability, especially when you get to the high school level because of the courses that they take, but we can have a general cost. Most of the stuff we can break out of cost per pupil. So, yes. That's it. Anything else among the board. One question in this alternative plan to if this plan were implemented, and there were enough issues with computers where they were breaking at the end of their useful life and it was starting to, I guess if you did this you could still every two to three years. Get a sort of alternate between alternate one alternate to correct, you could still acquire some additional computers that you had to. If

114these were failing but if you use plan to as your base, you would potentially realize some savings over that lifetime right. Yes, yes there there would be a savings there. The question that you would, we would always have to, to look at and really analyze is when we are getting towards the end of the school year, especially are we getting to the one to two year devices that are getting ready for scheduling we would really have to look at those physically and determine What, what they look like, more than anything else, licensing. If we're in a good schedule, when it comes to licensing. That doesn't usually become an issue. But if you push things out too far, Google being an example. You could use the Google education suite license to manage those devices to be

115able to push out what everything is all this all the lockdowns all of the applications that license expires after a certain period of time and it's not a renewable one you essentially have to buy a new device. So you you get into, you get into vendor planned obsolescence that is another thing that you end up starting to have to fight after a little while as well. And the last piece of the puzzle is that we have to think about as well as, you know, online testing that is now starting in grades K through 12 if you start to calculate what's our three through three through 12 if you start to calculate keystones So you have to make sure that you meet those requirements whenever you are purchasing devices, it is going to become challenging as

116new devices start to roll out because they are developing new chips for those devices that may or may not meet the requirements of those testing So it's interesting to see how those vendors react as those devices are released into the wild. Thank you. All things to think about. Any other questions from the board. I do have a couple questions. Is there a way to get the board information on how much time our students spend on their devices, not I think last year we got like the top five apps they spent time on like total use in a school day, total use in a 24 hour period, maybe weekly use by grade level. So, we are able to get some granularity with that but what we tried to do last year is still one of the

117things that we kind of we have a blind spot with to we can show you how much they use it over an entire year. But that number is a little bit misleading because that calculates in after school and in school. I can't break it out over those two time periods so it becomes difficult there. If I were to try and take the usage, if I were to try and take all of the actual sites that students visited on a daily basis. I actually don't have a machine power enough powerful enough to compile all of that data even using power BI. We're trying to take snippets of that and give us at least a snapshot so we can provide something like that for you. But it's not going to be a complete picture so I think

118that's the only thing that I would caution you on is we can give you some things, but there just aren't tools available to us either through the vendor or for us internally to be able to give you a definite detailed look at that particular point. Even just time spent on the Chromebook? Yeah, so I can give you time. I can give you time, but whenever if you want me to be able to say, Timmy spent 15 minutes on Renaissance learning during the day. A good starting point would probably be time. It's going to be a little bit difficult for that. Yeah, I think a good starting point would be time spent during the school day and then also seeing how they're being used out, how much they're being used outside of school. Yeah, I don't

119know if securely can securely give us more accurate and the parents can pull that data. Is there a way to pull that for us to pull that to see what they're actually using the Chromebooks for? So that's actually what I'm using it from. So I actually take and mix it and mash it together from both clever and securely to pull that information to get what I'm currently able to get. The full granularity piece that I think you're looking for is not achievable by us internally, but we can give you some of the information associated with it. Yeah, I think a good starting point would just be the time spent overall, maybe weekly broken down by grade level would be really helpful. This is a question for but PSSA prep. I don't know if there's keystone

120prep. When does that begin? Is that done on Chromebooks? What time of the part of the school year does that begin? Definitely. Hi, I'm the question PSSA. Yes, we have this year started getting the kids accustomed to using their devices for testing, more so than in the past. And we do have a program that's kind of like a prep program called Firefly, where the kids are doing online testing in a format that is supposed to mirror what they're going to. Now, I've never seen PSSA online yet, so I but it is supposed to mirror what they're going to be doing on the PSSA. So the kids are getting experience doing that for their benchmark testing at least two and maybe three times this year, depending on whether we're able to sneak in a little bit

121of extra practice. So they are getting some experience with getting ready to take those PSSAs in third grade and having it on that digital format. And when does that start? What part of the school year? Well, that is already started. We started first off, first off of that, we do benchmark testing three times a year. Everybody does. But for specifically for third grade, we have gone to the Firefly benchmark testing to try to emulate what they're going to be doing for PSSAs. And so that was once in the fall, like right as soon as school started. And then we did a winter one. And then we may be able to squeeze in maybe a partial one before the PSSA test in the spring. Okay, so we did an October one and we also did a

122January one. It was not just for the instructional side of things, but it was actually to put our tech systems through, you know, a test run with it to make sure that we were adequate. But yes, it was the Firefly system and it does mimic what the PSSA will look like, including the tools associated with that. And that's what a lot of the practice was for the Firefly side of it, especially for the math pieces to use the math tools using the devices that we have. We run devices that are touch screen and at our and at our IU tech coordinators meeting, they reported that students districts that were using touch screens have performed better than those on the Firefly than those that hadn't used touch screens. There is also we just did actually today

123in my class. There is also a practice for the PSSA that is exactly like the PSSA test, but it's just practicing the tools. And so the kids have the experience of going through maybe 15 questions and they're not doing it as they're taking like they're taking a test. They're doing it with me and I'm modeling. Okay, here's where you select the ruler. Oh, here's the equation tool. Here's how you do this thing. So we're walking through them step by step. So they're actually having hands on experience with and then they're leading me through it as well because I was like, I can't see how to make this any bigger. And they're like, okay, click right here, Mrs. Barnes. So we're all learning together how to manipulate that format essentially because it's all new to all

124of us. Thank you. Next question, probably a good question for our principals and administrators what what data do we track to see that these Chromebooks are helping our students learn. I guess, you know, to answer that question, a lot of the things that our teachers spoke to with looking at assessment data from our students, looking at student performance on, you know, individually assigned tasks that they give them. You know, it's formative assessment, you know, provides some immediate feedback and we talked about that a lot tonight, you know, we're assigned students work and teachers are able to I think this is Gallagher talked about that in the old days, you'd have kids lined up, you know, trying to get checked to work. I mean, I feel like there's a lot of immediacy there with respect to,

125are they mastering those skills and concepts quickly. And then that's driving the teachers instruction. And I know, Mrs. Barnes just talked about our benchmark assessment we constantly have data meetings grade level planning meetings where we're looking at the assessments that we collect. We talked a lot about the benchmark assessments that guide our instruction as the school year progresses to. And then I think cumulatively at the end of the school year when we get our PSSA scores, that's always one thing that we look at the gauge of the success of our building as a whole. I mean, it's just a third grade assessment, but it's kind of our kids are leaving us now and it's kind of the capstone to see where they're at before they go on to McMurray. I appreciate it. I guess what

126I'm getting at is how do we tease out, we look at before we had Chromebooks. And now we have or before we have one to ones and now we have one to ones, how do we tease out the actual impact causation versus correlation, like, did we have. Did we have poor outcomes before and better outcomes after and how do we directly relate that to the Chromebooks. We're not doing a research study on this. We were in the business of educating children, and we're held accountable to the outcomes of our children. So there's not there's not been a study, I don't give some children a Chromebook and some children not a Chromebook, and then see what happens, we would never do that to children. We look over time, I've been here 13 years, every year, we

127have as a district and our individual grade levels, we're continuing to move up in the standing in the state on on our state test. We are. And, and I, and again, can I attribute that to Chromebooks. No, I can look at different studies from Stanford when they look at, you know, the, you know, recoup learning from covert learning loss. Peters Township we are gaining at an accelerated rate. Since coven. You know, is that attributed to crumble. I wouldn't, I don't know I mean because we keep we're getting much better with amazing teachers, I don't know. So, I don't know if you know is answering that question going to help our children in terms of getting better outcomes. I mean, again, I'm not avid I don't think it would be worth taking the Chromebooks away to

128see if something really bad happens. No, and I can appreciate that we're not doing a research study here but I think that's why it's so important to look at the actual research that is being done. There's quite a bit that shows that Chromebooks, even with minimal daily use. Learning is impeded across reading comprehension, math, science so I brought some information with me. I've shared with the board before. What some of this evidence comes from standardized test international standardized test so one is the paisa, which is the program for international student assessment, and it tracks the academic performance of 15 year olds across dozens of countries. And basically it looks at understanding how 15 year olds applied the knowledge that they're learning to the world. Even with minimal daily use, less than 30 minutes a day

129scores dropped exponentially with more use in math, reading and science. The Tim's which is the trends and international mathematics and study in science study. So this is used to help validate states curriculums. The results showed that with almost never use one to one to two times per month, and one to two times per week in fourth grade math fourth grade science eighth grade math and eighth grade science scores were exponentially higher than students who set who use their Chromebooks or one to one devices almost daily. So the pearls is the progress and international reading literacy study monitors fourth grade reading reading literacy same exact result almost daily use was exponentially almost a 20% drop from students who use them one, one to two times a week we're talking about using it daily. And then not

130to belabor it but when they look at this is a looking at meta meta analyses so aggregating hundreds of small studies to see the impact of educational interventions. Basically when they're looking at meaningful impact. This is all standard deviations and bell curve and general instruction are excellent teachers in the classroom, being the benchmark for intervention to be significant to be worth implementing it has to fall point four to point five on the bell curve on the positive side for these medic meta meta analyses one to one laptops over three of them consists of 162 studies. One to one programs in schools had a negative point three, so on the other side of the bell curve standard deviation. So there's a ton of data. We don't have to do a research right there's tons of data

131out there that show that not only do these not help. They're hurting our kids. And I feel really passionately about this which is why I put so much research into it. And I could dive so deep into this. Like I said I've shared some of this information with the board before. And I think it probably would warrant a whole nother meeting honestly to discuss this data. But I think it's really important to look at it. We can't be expected to do a research study but but our decisions should be based in science, they should be based in research, and, and there's plenty of that I think to support this. I'm not sure how anyone else feels about this but I think that it warrants more conversation before we, I really appreciate the financial conversation the

132financial piece. But for me if I could see that it was helping students I would say, spend more money on if it's helping. It's not the financial piece for me. I don't think it's helping students, I think it's actually hurting a lot of students. I'm curious for you guys and you don't have to tell me right now so if we provided some sort of opt out option at least for the K through two where PSSA is aren't being affected. Like what would that look like for you guys, and you can get back to us at a later date like how would that function in your teachers classrooms, like what would that process look good on if you didn't opt out for a parent choosing not to have computers one to one with their kids session.

133Is it functional, like, what would the challenges be anything like that that like we could get some information on would be great. And that's all we can look so are you asking if in K in in K one and two, if we would just a parents because it's off their children out of computers. Yeah, if like they liably like don't want their children to have one on one computer time whether it's like a computer session or something that they can get themselves. I mean I think we could look into that I mean that would be a good natural experiment. Right. I mean I always like to look at data closest to the home, I'm a data walk I love to look at and I'm fascinated by what people are doing in other countries. But I

134also prefer looking at what's happening in my backyard. Fourth grade math here has been a bane of our existence we finally hit number one in the state. I feel as if the things that our teachers are doing with the tools that we're giving them. We're showing that we're consistently outperforming people of similar well, similar size. And again, I appreciate the research I read it too. I'm terrified of the things that are happening with technology. You know I'm terrified of these things, you know it this is not the computers in our classrooms that do damage to our kids. I worry that every day that these kids are on this, they're going to end up being adults and sit on Facebook all day and comment obsessively. I don't want that to happen to our kids. And that's

135why we are very very strict and concerned for our children. I don't think anyone in this room would ever do anything to hurt one of our kids, but constantly mindful of the interventions, studying the outcomes of our children holding ourselves accountable to. If a parent thinks that that's something that they want for their children, then, then I think that that's something that we can accommodate. I would want to do that. I appreciate that I think the same way that these massive international studies guide states. And curriculum, we should also allow them to guide us as it relates to technology use because they are used, our states do use these international studies to guide state standards and in curriculum. The other piece of that is it's also providing us data that looks across also socioeconomic levels

136and sees the same thing happening so I think we do need to use the data in that way as well. Because I think that what this is pointing out is that the best practice is our teachers teaching kids, but not with computers. As a teacher myself in my day job I don't know that I would necessarily agree with that automatically. These devices are a tool to be used. And if I need to do a job I'm going to pick up the tool that I think is the best one to use and if that happens to be something digital. That's the one I'm going to use. So it is the teacher in the room that is making that decision. And I think removing any tools from our teachers, whether it's a device, a textbook, you can't

137use pens today. I think that's going to limit what they can do and how they can do the job we've hired them to do. They have a lot of years of experience doing that job. I think they have proven that they are doing it very well. So I'm not sure that I would necessarily agree that removing one of their tools is going to help our students. And I certainly hear what you're saying about that research. But I'm also thinking that while we have been using these devices for the past few years, I don't think we've seen that. Haven't our scores gone up, not down? The majority have gone up. We have fluctuation every year. That's reasonable. Although I will say this is the first time that since I've been here in terms of our growth

138data, we have either exceeded the growth standard or far exceeded the growth standard across every grade and subject. I've never seen that before. It did happen this past year. And again, because of our amazing teachers. So in that sense, in terms of growth, yes. And based on that, and I'm not doubting the research, but I don't know what factors went into that research. And maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to tell me that if we hadn't used those tools in the classroom, that our students would have performed even higher. And the use that we've had the past few years has actually brought down their performance. That just doesn't seem reasonable to me. I would defer to our teachers, but it just seems odd. I don't think any research is going to have outliers. But

139I mean, these are massive international standardized tests that have been done for decades. They were done before one-to-ones and then after. And then like I said, these large meta-analyses. So I mean, I can't speak to, I mean, I'm not sure what your question was specifically about the data, like the fidelity of it or? No, I wasn't asking a question. I was simply saying that despite the data used in that research, I don't think we've seen that here in Peters. I guess I would just go back to the research that data should be guiding decisions, not like sort of anecdotal things. Or are we the outlier to all of this research? I would say that our experiences here in Peters are working pretty well. Yeah, again, but if we could say that these Chromebooks are what

140is causing this. But I don't think we have the data to show that. No, we don't. And I'm not saying that we do. What I am saying is that we have given our teachers an additional tool. And with all the tools they're using, our performance and our students achievement and learning seems to have gone up a lot. I mean, that's that's kind of what I heard from what you were saying tonight. So we have that data that shows that pre one-to-ones, it's our achievement and our results have gone up. No, we don't. But I don't think we have any data that shows that what happened in those studies with those students is directly applicable to ours. I'm seeing two different trends. There are also studies and standardized tests that guide our state's standards and curriculum.

141Yes, and the state level. OK, but it doesn't change the fact that our students on those very same state assessments are doing well and their performance is going up. So that that's why I'm not sure that it's necessarily a good idea to take away those divide, take away any of their tools to see what's going to happen with our performance. Now, I could be entirely wrong. It could be that we could remove those devices and our student scores would go up even more. That's entirely possible. I don't think so, but I'm not saying it's impossible. One quick last ad if I can request. So obviously we get to hear some of the community members here in a little bit. But I would love some more community involvement with this topic to see what actually people

142feel like similar to the self and working group at some point. If we could put that together on a community level to get input from all of the family members, bring teachers into it and have the discussion and open it up to see what's best for our students and see what is functional, if possible. I think that would be a great idea, kind of along the lines of the cell phone working group. I think it would be great to get members of the community involved and and kind of get their pulse on this. I'd like to get the pulse to on AI. I feel like if we're going to talk about technology, then let's put AI in there, too. To get the pulse of what people's I know I know right. But I agree, having

143a discussion. It's our duty to the community to the student, it warrants the discussion. Nothing's in stone, but let's keep an open mind. Anything else from the board. In that case, I guess we are moving on to public comment. My name is Julie Serrani. I am a resident of Peters Township. Mr. Briegel, you actually took literally my notes that I had written in your last statement. I sat here, whether it was a year ago or two years ago when we had all of the administrators talking about this. I sat here and listened to our wonderful teachers talk about what a fabulous tool devices are in their toolbox. The teachers are teaching. They're using a tool. If we take tools away from them, the teachers are going to leave and go somewhere else. Teachers are in

144high demand everywhere. We have wonderful teachers. Why would we take something away from them that has a proven effect? We have the data. We know they're doing wonderful. And thank you guys all for being here. You all are wonderful. And the other comment, parents need to parent. Yes, we all have to do our job at home. Get your kids off your device at home. Anybody else. Address is not necessary, simply a residency status. I'm a resident of Peters Township. My name is Sam Perlmutter. Is my microphone on? Okay, good. So the one question I had was this was you mentioned very specific numbers of what the savings would be based on the different options. But usually we attribute that to a denominator. So what is that? So it's a savings of what? It was going

145to be this and now it's going to be that. So that was based on early numbers right now. Our quotes are only good for about two weeks at this particular point. So it's fluid. So I don't want to misspeak in this particular point. So we have to wait for a little bit of our updated pricing to come back before I can officially answer what that would be. I think it was Mrs. Kennedy, you asked if we could figure out what is the current spend annually for this technology all in. So that's the staff. That's the software. That's the hardware. Because I'm assuming if we can have that level of accuracy on savings, we have that same level of accuracy on what the current annual spend is. So we're able to get that? Yeah, we're able

146to get it. I don't have it with me right now. Okay, that's fine. I thought you said it might be a generalized cost, but I was like we should be able to be dead on the money on that, right? We'll be pretty close. Okay. On the educational side, based on the agenda, I had no idea this was going to be focused on just K-3. I think that's great. So I was coming here just to be educated. I have a son who's in kindergarten. I can't say enough good things about Mrs. N. I try to whenever I get a chance. He's been absolutely thriving with her. And I can attest to what you mentioned about the laptop is maybe touched once a week. I think that's phenomenal. So what's happening in these lower grades, it's probably

147barely a touch point, right? So the significance of having them removing them is probably a lot less insignificant than what it is at higher up. But I'm surprised by some of the responses actually to your question, Mrs. Bensie. I thought it was a straightforward question with a very condescending response to it, which was no one's suggesting a research study on students. That's insane. We've technically started a research study on students by implementing this technology abruptly. Unfortunately, at the lower grades, it's being dabbled in so lightly. You know, I can really see some major effect, of course. But simply talking about the improvements, like we didn't want to mention money, but the fact is we're spending money. So the taxpayers, I'm a taxpayer in Peters Township. It's likely going to be a substantial number when you

148get it to us of what this actually costs annually. Anywhere else in the world, we're going to tie that to a result into a measurable result. Education, very nonlinear, completely understand that. But I've heard the scores have gone up for Mr. Briegel that we're doing extremely well. Why is that? Amazing teachers, amazing parents who deeply care about the success of a kid. So that combination is happening. But to attribute the spend to the effect is a pretty big deal in the world of mandated taxes. And the idea that I think you just asked, OK, so what were the scores before? What are they currently so that we can actually see that there has been no negative effect, a current effect or a positive effect, which has been the claim? I don't think that's a difficult

149ask. I'm sorry for the way your questions were handled, but we should be able to get that. I think that's a pretty straightforward thing. If that's all, I was just going to remind everyone that there is a two minute limit. I just wanted to point out the time. I wasn't trying to interrupt you or stop you. I understand. Yeah, sorry if I went over. So wait, do I still have some time? No. Negative. OK, I'm sorry. We were listening. No, there were two minutes. I'm not talking too much, so thank you. Any others? Hi there. My name is Brian Marcinko. I was actually here last year for the discussion also. And, you know, one of the things that I spoke about last year and asked about, and Alex, you hit on this a bit. And,

150you know, it's really around utilization of the devices. And last year, the agenda really included some data from each grade level. And I believe my comment was, I think the data is shockingly low from a utilization standpoint. And I just think that it's, you know, for thinking of making an investment in devices, we really have to have an understanding of utilization by our students and also by our teachers and what we're actually getting out of it. You know, we do a lot in the form of, you know, performance management. And that's all tracked within Power School, right? And I have to think with everything being on system that we're able to understand the students and the teachers that are utilizing the, you know, the devices really, really effectively. And the ones that are maybe not.

151And being able to publish a, you know, a high, mid and low and being able to score across the board. I think that's absolutely, you know, mission critical, you know, if we're going to continue to make the investment in devices. You know, a lot of the commentary was focused on K through three. My kids are, are in order, you know, grades at this point in time. They had several of the teachers that are behind me. Hi, Miss Gallagher. You know, my one daughter struggled immensely with IXL. She hated him. She's in seventh grade this year. I think maybe IXL should become more optional. I don't know if she'd appreciate me sharing this, but she came home the first day of school and she said, man, dad, this is great. I love this one teacher. I'm

152like, why is that? She goes, she says, IXL are optional. And she said that they're stupid. So, I mean, she was again, that's a single experience. But I think it's worth taking into account that, you know, hey, my one daughter struggled. And it's not the experience that was delivered in the K through three today. Thanks. Mr. Marcinco, can I ask you a question? You said you use the word utilization. Can you help us understand what your definition of utilization is? I think it's, you know, Alex was really hitting time on the device. But I also think it's time in the applications that are being used. Right. You know, we, a lot of the examples were on IXLs, but then we think the time spent in an IXL, for example, I heard 10, 15 minutes. Right.

153So like, is that is that across the board? Is that is one student in there far longer? Is one student in there far less? How are we reporting that back to the parents? Right. That's just one example. I think we talked about the time on within Google. Right. I can tell you right now, my daughter watched a dance competition on a Friday afternoon or a Friday morning in Google because I wouldn't let her go to it because her friends were competing. So she I heard her say that she was going to try it. And I'm like, all right, we'll go ahead and try it. Let's see if it works. So, you know, hey, I guess I lose my Dad of the Year card for admitting that today. Right. But those are a couple of things

154that I think we absolutely need to push out to our parents if we're going to invest in these devices further. Yep. Last call. All right. Well, the first thing I'd like to do is just thank all of our teachers, especially for being here. I know that your day starts early. I know it's a late one for you and you have another early morning tomorrow. So thank you very much for coming out and sharing what you're doing with us. Thank you also to the administrators for coming out and thank you to the public for showing up. Otherwise, I don't think I really have anything for closing remarks. Dr. Murphy, Dr. Frank. We just have to have an executive session. Oh, yay. Well, in that case, I guess we are adjourned. Thank you all very much. Have

155a safe way home.