Arlington School District hands out Chromebooks

For the first time ever the Arlington School District will provide every student a Chromebook to have technology at home.

On multiple days in August the district provided the devices to all families.

"We expect to give out 300 to 400 Chromebooks here today for kids," said Mark Ehrhardt, director of technology with the district.

While Arlington schools have given out the devices in past years, this is the first time the district is a "one-to-one" district where every student will receive a device.

"We have not been a one-to-one school when we had sent Chromebooks home before," said Ehrhardt.

The district heavily invested in the devices last spring by purchasing 2,000 new Chromebooks.

"When we had the COVID emergency in the spring we knew we had a certain number of Chromebooks that would have to be refreshed anyway," said Ehrhardt.

The district usually purchases new devices each year, but they went above their normal amount with a large order.

"We actually got really lucky … if we had tried to order a couple of weeks later we not have received them until October as there's such a demand for them now across the country," said Ehrhardt.

Internet access remains a concern for many school officials. Ehrhardt estimates about 20 percent of students don’t have adequate internet access.

"There is a real problem with not just not having internet access, but even when they do it's sometimes not broadband so they're not able to connect to school and really do distance learning," he said.

The school district is working on ways to provide that access to students who will need it to connect with teachers.

"We have a limited number of hotspots so we're allowing people to sign up for the list," said Ehrhardt.

They have a number of hotspots available currently, which likely will not be enough to cover the total needs of the district, he said.

Those hotspots are also a big cost for the district.

"That is $60,000 a year that is costing the schools," said Ehrhardt.

The district is also setting up antennas that will provide Wi-Fi hotspots in many of the school's parking lots.

"We're trying to be creative. As much as possible we're lighting up parking lots," said Ehrhardt.

"I don't know what's going to happen. We need to have some better solution that allows us to work with families. It's not unique to Arlington, but it is a big challenge here," he said.

As classes begin in the fall the Arlington School District will be mostly online classes except for specific groups of high-need students.

District officials say they are doing more to improve the experience from last spring.

"We are making a real effort to make this better than it was in the spring. We worked a lot on staff development and trying to simplify and be consistent," said Ehrhardt. He said that connections to classrooms will be more streamlined and unified so that parents and kids will hopefully have an easier time this fall.