School board members spar over role of technology for Springfield's youngest students

Middle school students will no longer bring school-provided Chromebooks home with them from Springfield Public Schools if the district follows through with one of several technology-related committee recommendations presented to SPS board members on Feb. 14.

And SPS kindergartners wouldn’t get Chromebooks at all if a few board members had their way.

That’s a decision that would go against the committee’s recommendations and one that led to some intense debate among board members Tuesday.

Later this month, the school board will vote on a series of purchases centered around technology integration and the district’s mission — stated in the latest strategic plan — to develop students into digital citizens.

Teachers, principals and other certified staff are due for new laptops. (The district buys new ones every four years, said Bruce Douglas, SPS director of information technology.) The district is also looking to purchase a new set of Chromebooks for 2023-2024 freshman students to carry with them through their high school years. And there are also plans to purchase touchscreen Chromebooks for kindergarten students, which SPS Superintendent Grenita Lathan said will be used to administer the district’s new universal academic screener and acclimate young students to a testing system they’ll see throughout their SPS tenure.

No board members had problems with authorizing computer purchases for staff or high school students. But board member Kelly Byrne and board vice president Maryam Mohammadkhani explicitly said they won’t support purchases of Chromebooks for kindergartners. Their reasoning drew pushback from the other four board members — Danielle Kincaid, Scott Crise, Shurita Thomas-Tate and president Denise Fredrick.

Technology policy review followed April board meeting, where one member compared screen addictions for young learners to fentanyl

Last April, the district changed its policy regarding Chromebook access for elementary school students. Elementary students no longer take the devices home from school with them, although guardians of children in grades 3-5 can opt to allow their kids to bring them home. While each elementary school tracks how many guardians have opted into letting kids bring home Chromebooks, the district did not have cumulative data available when asked this week by the Daily Citizen.

Mohammadkhani said during a board meeting last April that developing technology literacy is an important skill, but compared the challenge of parents and teachers reducing a young student’s screen time to “taking fentanyl away from an addict.” John Mulford, SPS deputy superintendent, said then that access to technology can be a huge benefit for students, but can also be a detriment when people become over-reliant on it.

The change to elementary access was announced as the school board unanimously OKed the purchase of 5,500 new Chromebooks for $1.39 million to replace the oldest devices in the district. SPS administrators had initially recommended purchasing 7,300 Chromebooks for $1.84 million. Mohammadkhani said last April that she viewed the decision to purchase those Chromebooks as a necessary step while the board and district officials took a deep dive into how and when technology is used by students at all grade levels. The results of the district deep dive were presented this week.

On Feb. 14, Nicole Holt, SPS deputy superintendent of academics, said that beginning last May, principals and teachers had opportunities to weigh in on the strengths and challenges of the district’s current technology integration model. Last fall, a 31-member tech integration committee was formed to review the feedback and compare and contrast how SPS uses tech with other Missouri districts, as well as look at SPS in relation to national education trends.

Screentime for youngest learners subject of heated board-level debate

Byrne applauded the “fantastic communication between the board and the staff” on the tech review and praised the recommendation to keep middle school Chromebooks at school.

But he questioned a recommendation to replace kindergarten-level iPads with Chromebooks, or with any kind of screen.

“This is the thing that jumps out to me the most,” he said. “I’m really excited about the direction we’re going with being responsible with the screen time and devices in kids’ hands. What’s most concerning to me is on the younger end, in terms of availability, they have to YouTube or screentime or whatever. Everything seems like we’re heading in that direction until we say we’re going to spend money to replace iPads with Chromebooks at kindergarten.”

Holt said that in talking with the district’s kindergarten teachers, staff heard that many wanted to shift away from what SPS currently offers and instead offer touchscreen Chromebooks to children in those classrooms.

“That’s the device that they will eventually be using as they move through SPS, and so getting them acquainted with that earlier, we thought, would be supportive,” Holt said.

She pointed out that kindergartners take part in the district’s assessment processes, even if they don’t yet take part in state assessments. She said the kindergarten device conversation has been an ongoing one for a decade, and that administrators speak with groups of kindergarten teachers regularly about it. With Chromebooks, Holt said, kindergarten teachers will be able to administer assessments and give students simple assignments for “a fraction” of the school day.

“What do we really need one Chromebook for every kindergarten student if the amount they actually need the thing is so minimal?” Byrne asked. “Why can’t those devices be shared across classrooms?”

Douglas, the IT director, said that’s been answered in feedback through the years. Kindergarten teachers, he said, have told the IT department that it was difficult to plan a day not knowing whether or when devices shared among different classrooms would be available.

Mohammadkhani later pushed back, saying, “I think that the right answer is no device is the right device” for kindergartners. She said kindergartners could take assessment tests on printed paper, and that the savings from buying devices could be put toward other classroom resources or additional teachers.

With older students, Mohammadkhani said she wanted them to have access to check out and bring home devices that offered software not installed on district Chromebooks, like Microsoft 365 or Adobe programs.

“I think you can get through high school with a Chromebook and be prepared,” she said. “But there are some students — and I think this becomes an issue because we have different income students — and there are students who do get sophisticated technology from their parents. And I think that it’s important that we allow other students who could excel, who do need the same …”

Kincaid spoke up.

“And Maryam I think what you just said is very important when we’re talking about removing technology from K-2,” she said. “Because you’re right. Different students have different experiences at home. And if they’ve never, or have had limited technology exposure prior to reaching third grade, we’re going to have a problem with those students.”

Mohammadkhani came back to that point moments later.

“And I categorically disagree with you that you need to have exposure to screens in pre-K to 2 to be ready in third grade,” Mohammadkhani said.

Kincaid responded: “So you think a third grader taking an assessment test, who has had access to technology at home, taking an assessment test on a device — a third grader who has had access to technology — is going to do just as well as a third grader who’s never held a device in their hand because their home doesn’t have electronic devices?”

Kincaid went on to ask Mohammadkhani — yes or no — if K-2 students with limited technology access will have as much success in third grade as students who have previously had access. Mohammadkhani said yes.

Watch the two board members debate, or read a partial transcript of the conversation below the video.

Byrne asked if the kindergarten tech purchase could be separated into its own vote so he could vote against it on Feb. 28. Mohammadkhani said she did not see herself being able to support “any form of technology in pre-K, early childhood, kindergarten, first and second grade,” adding that, “I just don’t think it’s necessary for their success as graduates for the workplace or for college.”

Fredrick, the board president, asked Lathan if the superintendent and SPS staff could bring some kindergarten teachers to the next board meeting, so members could hear directly from them about their needs for a presentation that would, in part, mirror one that teachers and principals gave on the district's new universal screener last month.

“I feel like that we are board members, that we have limited classroom experience,” Fredrick, a retired science teacher, said. “Certainly with early learning. And we are talking about some important decisions here that will affect the — we’re talking about a decision that would limit our teachers’ ability to do their job. So if we should make a decision that we, this board, decide no technology for kindergartners, then our kindergarten teachers will have to manage that. So I would like to hear from the experts in the classroom.

“Because we are not the experts here.”

Discussion touched on merits of Chromebook itself

In total, the estimated cost of the recommended Chromebook purchase order for kindergartners and freshmen is about $1.23 million. Douglas said each Chromebook cost roughly $225, and the district pays a one-time fee that addresses the management of the Chromebooks, which includes securing, tracking and placing content filters on the devices. “There’s no additional cost beyond that,” he said.

Board member Steve Makoski, who is the human resources director at Rapid Roberts, said, “We don’t use Chromebooks at all” in the business world and expressed doubts about the devices preparing high school students for the real world.

Crise, gas plant operations manager at Associated Electric Cooperative, countered, saying his business is shifting more toward using tablets over PCs.

“And we’re not in education, either,” Crise added.

Makoski asked about the comparative costs of a Chromebook versus a PC. Douglas said PCs are roughly double the cost per unit. Thomas-Tate asked for confirmation that students have access to PCs on campus for specific classes and curriculum. They do, Douglas said, at both the middle school and high school levels.

Should the board approve the purchase of the Chromebooks, the district has heard from principals, teachers and staff about how much to use them and what roles devices best serve.

Last year, 555 K-12 teachers participated in a tech survey. Among the strengths teachers often mentioned about the district's devices mentioned were “collaboration tools,” “real-world connections” and “data collection.” Among the opportunities to improve were “too much time on devices” and “limited student expectations.”

Holt said the 31-member committee that was formed last fall agreed that middle school students should no longer bring Chromebooks home with them. Holt said it also recommended creating two technology integration coordinator positions in the district, with one coordinator continuously curating a vetted list of software that aligns with K-5 curriculum and the other focused on 6-12 curriculum.

“It’s really about ensuring that what we bring in that is technology-related is aligned to our core curriculum and that we can support teachers in doing the background work of that so they don’t have to go look for it themselves,” Holt said.

She added that the improvement opportunities would look familiar to the board, as some members had expressed the same concerns last April. And so the district set technology usage guidelines that would limit elementary student use of Chromebooks and other devices at a max of 20 percent per school day, and secondary students at 30 percent per school day.

But Holt stressed that those parts of the day are key to improving academic achievement across the district.

“Leaders told us in the spring that the device my students have is supportive of the learning that’s happening, and that was echoed by what the teachers said,” Holt said.