Times Observer file photo
Warren County Career Center Protective Services student Jayce Turner delivers two laptop computers to a Warren County family during a drive-up event in December at the Warren County School District central office.
There are enough challenges facing schools and students in the COVID era.
Having the necessary technology to work at home or from home should not be one of them.
So, the Warren County School District has been making sure its students have the hardware they need. After giving out 1,768 laptop computers to families that would need them, the district has about 700 left.
So far, there have been three distribution events for the laptops — part of a program to remove barriers facing students.
The district has used federal grant dollars to purchase the computers, mobile wi-fi hotspots, and other hardware to help students should they have to work from home.
There is a new survey on the district website — wcsdpa.org– asking families if they have enough computers capable of handling a return to virtual learning.
“The newest survey is for current students,” Director of Administrative Support Services Gary Weber said. “Kindergarten and first grade and any transfer students weren’t included in the original survey so we wanted to capture those folks.”
“The computer distribution has gone well,” Weber said. “With the students on the original list that have left school and those that have not responded we are still well over half of the computers distributed over three days.”
The district applied for and received federal Emergency Connectivity Funding and used that funding to buy the computers.
“People have been very responsive,” Weber said. “Since we put out the second survey we’ve already received just under 500 submissions. We are hoping that with the latest survey we can capture those remaining that would need computers for home usage.”
