Hermon rejects state’s high school laptop project

HERMON – Feeling rushed and facing uncertainties about school funding, the Hermon School Committee rejected Thursday a statewide proposal to put laptops in freshman high school classrooms.

It wasn’t that committee members opposed technology in the classrooms; the school system is considered innovative when it comes to that. But with an estimated price tag of $60,000 over four years for one grade alone in tight budget times and the prospects of a statewide tax cap going before voters in the fall, committee members were reluctant to jump on board.

“I have some real concerns as to how well they would be used here and how they would be used,” said high school Principal Brian Walsh, who reminded the committee that he had to cut $56,000 in equipment from this year’s budget and $59,000 in equipment the year before.

Ultimately the committee voted 4-0 against moving forward with the state laptop proposal. A committee member representing sending schools from Carmel and Levant abstained.

In its stead, the committee intends to establish a subcommittee to look into increasing technology in the classrooms on their own and at their own pace.

The project was opposed by most of the half-dozen people who addressed the school committee, including school and town officials who had concerns about the durability of the laptops and having to train teachers in laptop use at a time when they already have many other competing requirements. Some also balked at the timing of the project and at suggestions that the state would really reimburse some of the costs to the towns.

“This is the wrong time for us to be jumping into something like this, as much as I’d love to see every kid have a laptop,” Town Manager Clint Deschene said, telling the committee that the school department would have to cut $1.4 million from its budget if a tax cap proposal passes this fall.

School officials also wondered about the equity and ramifications of having laptops just for freshmen, although the suggested cost of $720,000 to outfit all 584 high school students likely was even less palatable.

Hermon Middle School teacher Shawn Kimball, who heads the laptop program at the middle school, decried such high-end figures as “scare tactics” and he said that they were “way out of line.”

Kimball said that concerns that Walsh and others had about the laptops and integrating them into the curriculum had been worked out at the middle school level.

He pressed for Hermon to join other school systems in adopting the laptops for the high school. Hermon School Superintendent Patricia Duran said that as of a few days ago, the state had about half of the 8,400 students it needed to continue with its low-cost contract with Apple, the computer company providing the laptops.

Kimball left before the vote, but before he did, he warned that “the world is watching” Maine’s laptop program and the state could lose its beneficial contract with the computer company.

“And there will never be a deal like that again, so it’s for the sake of all people, and I hope that Hermon would get the [laptops] for the sake of our own children,” Kimball said.

With an effective deadline of today for Maine school departments to sign up for the program, committee members such as Shelly Look were also feeling a little rushed and she warned against what she called “impulse shopping.”

Jeff Wheeler, director of information services for Hermon, may be wondering why Hermon needs laptops at all. Using outdated, castoff computers Wheeler and others have developed a networking system that provides computer access to all students who can reach their virtual desktops to do work in school or at home.

And although the network doesn’t have all the high-tech audio and video capabilities that Kimball said is increasingly becoming part of learning, Wheeler said with the money schools save with his system, they can put in high-tech labs to do the video jobs the students want and need.