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District tech review: 3,300 Chromebooks, filtering and teacher surveys support keeping 1‑to‑1 program
Summary
A board presentation showed about 3,300 Chromebooks in service, a roughly $400,000 annual replacement budget, and teacher survey results that favor keeping 1‑to‑1 devices; IT staff described filtering, monitoring, and a Securely Home pilot for parent visibility.
Elizabethtown Area School District technology leaders told the board on Jan. 27 that the district’s 1‑to‑1 program remains a cornerstone of instruction even as trustees weigh device use, costs and screen‑time concerns.
Ted Cardwell and Dr. Kirkpatrick presented inventory and survey results gathered from a fall teacher questionnaire and district device records. Cardwell said the district has about 3,300 Chromebooks in student service (the core 1‑to‑1 fleet), roughly 170 Mac computers used for programming and labs, about 170 iPads (mainly kindergarten carts), 45 Windows machines for TechEd/CAD, and nearly 7,000 total connected devices when infrastructure, printers and other equipment are included.
The district currently budgets about $400,000 a year for Chromebook replacement after initial federal purchases accelerated adoption during COVID, Cardwell said. He warned the board of an industry chip shortage affecting future device pricing but said recent bulk buys secured favorable pricing for next year’s purchases.
On classroom use, teacher survey summaries presented by Dr. Kirkpatrick indicated technology is used daily or nearly every day in secondary classrooms (4–5 times per week) with average in‑class durations commonly estimated at 20 to 45 minutes; elementary use is more station‑based. Presenters disclosed they used NotebookLM to create an executive summary of open‑ended survey responses and then condensed that summary with ChatGPT to produce presentation slides; board members asked staff to circulate the raw survey data and the full executive summaries for review.
IT staff described safeguards that exceed minimum CIPA requirements: the district uses Securly for web filtering and alerting, a classroom monitoring mode that allows teachers to see student device activity, and a pilot of Securely Home that parents may opt into to view their child’s district device usage off campus. Cardwell said the district enforces vetting for software installs, uses Google Admin and endpoint protections, and logs authentication activity on district devices.
Board members asked for more precise usage metrics and requested per‑school and grade‑level breakdowns of time on devices; staff agreed to provide the detailed reports or to consult Securly about available reporting options (some reports may carry vendor fees).
Ending
Presenters said the technology review will be shared with the education planning committee and that staff will send granular device‑use data and the full teacher survey executive summaries to trustees upon request.
