Upstate NY District Invests $3.1 Million in New Technology
The Mahopac
Central School District will
spend $3.1 million over the next couple years to upgrade its Internet
infrastructure and acquire Chromebooks for all of its 1,700 students in
five
schools.
The
small district in Putnam County, about 50
miles north of New York City, will take advantage of the New York State Smart
Schools Bond Act which voters approved two years ago,
authorizing school
districts throughout the state to invest $2 billion in technology.
The
Mahopac district will immediately spend
$200,000 to purchase 540 Chromebooks and 18 storage and charging carts.
The
next step will be to improve its Internet capabilities to make sure the
district can accommodate so many students using technology at once.
"We
do not have certain infrastructure
improvements that we need if we're really going to advance technology,"
said District Superintendent Dennis Creedon in a report for The Examiner.
The
district's high school is the last of its
five campuses to receive upgrades that will boost Internet speed from
200
megabytes per second to 500.
"If
our high school was to have kids using our
WiFi all at once, the system would fail right now," he said.
In
the coming months, teachers will receive
training in how to incorporate Chromebooks and cloud-based technology
into
their classrooms.
"Our
goal is to have totally tech-savvy educators
who know how to engage young people and turn them on to learning,"
Creedon
added.
The
district will also use part of the state
technology grant to install new security doors and security cameras at
it
schools.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.