EV District Seeks $6.27 Million To Update Computer Technology

East Valley School District is asking voters to back a $6.27 million bond that will improve the ratio of students to computers from 15-to-1 to 4-to-1.

“That’s seven computers in a classroom of 28 kids,” says EV technical coordinator Jerry Etchison. Right now, the average elementary or middle school classroom in East Valley has one computer - and likely an out-of-date one, at that.

The district has used grant money, vo-tech money, special ed money and federal e-rate funding and every other available source to network its buildings and bring technology into its schools. It’s been a slow process.

“But we have a good solid vision of where we want the district to go,” says Tim Wick, chairman of the East Valley Bond Committee and former school board member.

“We’ve been piecemealing everything together,” Etchison says. “The reason we’re running a bond is, we need a jumpstart.”

More than half the bond amount, $3.87 million would go to computers and other technology in the schools. Network infrastructure would be alloted $1.5 million.

“Our goal is not to teach technology. That’s not it. But to use technology as a tool,” Etchison says.

Some teachers are already using technology in innovative ways.

At Otis Orchards Elementary School, Stacey Johnson is using a digital camera and computer to create a yearbook with her first-graders. Mountain View Middle School students are dissecting a virtual frog in Georgiann Delgadillo’s seventh- and eighth-grade science classes.

Sophomores in Julie Seipp’s English/humanities class at East Valley High School use the Internet each year to research a European city, as the setting of a historical novel they will write.

The influx of computers won’t happen overnight. The district will have three or four years to spend 80 percent of the bond money. The bond will not pay for teacher training, but the district has a plan for that. Eight teachers received tech training and equipment this summer through a grant from the Gates Foundation. Those teachers and other experienced staff members will become trainers for their peers.

Within the next four years or so, if the bond passes, the district’s 225 classrooms will be equipped not just with computers, but chairs, tables and a scanner and projector.

Bond money also will pay for technology centers in each school. Those centers will be available for a class of students, a group of teachers or even a community group.

The bond would also use $900,000 to upgrade the telephone system. The district long since outgrew its phone system. Calling East Valley High School, for instance, is a matter of patience, dialing and redialing.

“Technology is a tool,” Wick says. “It’s a tool that we have to give our kids.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: WHAT’S IT FOR

Techology bond East Valley School District’s $6.27 million technology bond will be on the Tuesday ballot. The bond is expected to keep tax rates at a few cents under today’s rate. Based on an estimate of 3 percent increase in assessed property valuation, East Valley’s bond tax rate would stay at $2.43 per thousand dollars valuation from 2001 through 2009. This year’s tax rate was $2.48 per thousand.