What's in the school levy?
For the past year or two, I've been part of the Mercer Island School District's Technology Advisory Committee, which studied and commented on the $6.74 million of items that are included in this year's Capital Projects Levy (which by the way, is much less than the $7.9M that our group recommended in order to keep up with other districts).
Here's how the technology portion will be spent (all numbers in $K):
| 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | |
| Machine replacement | 330 | 330 | 335 | 340 |
| Additional computers | 0 | 0 | 150 | 150 |
| WAN/LAN upgrades | 500 | 500 | 300 | 200 |
| Servers | 25 | 25 | 25 | 25 |
| New/replacement peripherals | 55 | 60 | 60 | 65 |
| Software | 65 | 65 | 65 | 65 |
| Pilot projects | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 |
| Network engineers | 150 | 150 | 150 | 150 |
| Tech specialists | 170 | 255 | 255 | 255 |
| Training | 200 | 100 | 200 | 100 |
| LCD Projectors | 225 | 225 | 0 | 0 |
| Digital Doc cameras | 68 | 68 | 0 | 0 |
| Interactive whiteboards | 56 | 56 | 56 | 56 |
|
| 1,859 | 1,849 | 1,611 | 1,421 |
These items are considered bare essentials in any world-class company these days. The machine replacement budget and the LAN/WAN upgrades are obvious, unless you are living in some third-world society (in which case you don't read my blog anyway). LCD projectors? I use these every day in my job; why wouldn't we want teachers to use them too?
You might think that teacher quality is what matters most in a classroom -- and I agree -- but like any good technology, some of these items make teachers far more effective. Take a look at some videos showing off those interactive whiteboards. My kids have been lucky enough to be in a few of the classrooms that use these and they are way more productive than with the old-fashioned blackboards. Those whiteboards also use that new "clicker" technology that dramatically helps shy kids be included in classroom conversations. Imagine how much more you might have learned in school if you could have anonymously told the teacher that you don't understand something, rather than be intimidated by the show-off kids who seem to be the only ones raising their hands.
If we want Mercer Island kids to keep up to their real competitors in China and India, we are going to have to use every tool at our disposal, including technologies like these. I think this budget is on the low side of what we really should be doing, especially compared to the IT budgets in highly-competitive industries where I want my kids to someday participate.