District Technology Plan

            The Calcasieu Parish Technology Plan is a seven year plan adopted on March 6, 2007.  Calcasieu Parish receives a discount on telecommunications and Internet access known as “E-Rate.”  E-Rate, the Schools and Libraries Program Universal Service Fund, is administered by the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) under the direction of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This discount is available to most schools and libraries in the United States, provided certain criteria are met, one of which is a technology plan that meets their guidelines.  Calcasieu Parish’s technology plan has four objectives: 1) Strengthen Leadership; 2) Improve Teacher Training; 3) Support E-Learning and Virtual Schools; and 4) Provide Improved Access and Technology Usage.  These objectives are evaluated continually by a wide variety of data:  state technology assessments taken every spring by students and educators, school and district technology assessments, classroom observations, budget system reports, student enrollment in E-Learning classes, and many other sources.  All of these evaluations occur at least annually; some of these reports are generated bi-annually or even quarterly.  The E-Rate Technology Component has monthly statements for the different parts of the telecommunications services and Internet access; these are evaluated on usage.

The School Board provides training at the Tech Center, a full time continuing learning center open to educators in Calcasieu Parish.  Teachers are encouraged to sign up on-line for technology classes, free of charge, after school hours, and a wide range of courses are offered.  Some of these are on-line training; many of them are face-to-face workshops.  The School Board also has a four year rotation system for CBT, Computer Based Training, to provide teachers with training in technology-integrated instruction.  At the conclusion of the training, each teacher receives a new computer, software, and depending upon funding available, perhaps a printer or a scanner.  Different grade levels are assigned each year across the parish for CBT.  In addition to full time staff at the Tech Center and in the Technology Department (CPSB’s “troubleshooters” and technology planners), each school also has at least one person to help with technology problems. 

            In examining the CPSB Technology plan, the data listed states that the current ratio of students per computer is 3.5 to 1.  It also states that six schools in the district were behind in this ratio, having more than 5 to 1 ratio of computers to student.  I have a little problem with this number.  This makes it sound as if each classroom has all these computers, available to the students.  In actuality, many of the computers counted are in computer labs or in the library.  I know of only one class on my campus that has more than six computers (with a class of 35 students).  That particular teacher has written numerous grants to get her computers, and did in fact get I-Pads for students to use in her room this year.  (Yeah for grants!)  The majority of teachers in our school have 2-3 working computers in their classroom.  Until this year, I had one working computer in my classroom.  Now I have three!   Our school uses Title I funds, participates in 8-G grants, and various other means to get us as much new technology as possible.   On my campus, we have a lovely computer lab, staffed by a fulltime teacher, but not all of the grade levels are allowed to attend.  Grades 3-5 are scheduled for several time slots a week, and last year grades 1 and 2 were allotted 2 time slots weekly.  Kindergarten and Pre-K were not given any computer lab time at all.  This year first grade does not have computer lab time, either.  (In fairness to the instructor, we have a very large school, with 5-6 sections of each grade. She has to have planning periods.)  The library also has a computer lab, but there is no one to staff it.   This lab is used by the older grades for projects, but the younger grades mainly use the lab for STAR testing or AR tests.    Teachers are allowed to schedule time slots but if there is a problem, you are on your own, unless the tech person on staff can come help you out.  Our tech person is extremely capable, but as she is also an administrator; she is already quite busy.  (She’s also the one writes most of our grants!)  To me, this is a huge weakness in our system; each school should have a full time tech person on staff who only handles tech problems.  With our school system having a projected $2,000,000 short fall in the budget this year, I don’t foresee that happening any time soon. 

Calcasieu Parish School System (CPSS) Technology Plan, (March 6, 2007).  Retrieved from http://www.cpsb.org/system/policies/techplan.pdf

Marianne Wallace   EDLD 5306/ET 8038