Toledo Public Schools officials will make available to every household in the district Google Chromebook laptops that students can use to complete coursework during the coronavirus pandemic, administrators said Tuesday.
The plan to distribute the district’s Chromebooks comes as students face the prospect of finishing the 2019-2020 school year remotely — and possibly starting the next school year the same way. State officials indicated recently there’s no guarantee that K-12 schools —shuttered in March to slow the spread of the virus — will reopen come fall.
It also comes as school leaders across the state continue to combat what state lawmakers have described as the digital divide between the online resources afforded to students at wealthier suburban districts and more poor urban districts.
For Christina Cherry, a mother of three TPS students — a second and fifth-grader at Leverett Elementary and a senior at Scott High School — the distribution ensures that her children can now access online resources. Prior to receiving a Chromebook on Tuesday, Ms. Cherry said her children were not able to complete online coursework after the temporary closing of Toledo Lucas County Public Library.
“This is a great benefit for the children. I really appreciate it and I’m sure other parents do too because my babies couldn’t get online to do their online coursework since they’ve been out of school. This helps us out a lot,” she said.
James Gault, TPS’s executive transformational leader of curriculum, said the district began supplying seniors and students with disabilities with devices first, as both student populations rely heavily on online coursework. By the time the distribution is complete, TPS hopes to have offered 8,100 families access to the laptops. Mr. Gault said the distribution should be complete in the next two weeks.
“We’ve just started with seniors who are on Apex — online learning courses for school credit recovery — and we’ve also been working with our students with disabilities to make sure they’re getting technology. After we handle them, we’ll continue to work our way through the district,” he said.
Mr. Gault said it cost the district nearly $1.5 million to purchase the Chromebooks.
TPS also recently launched a program where buses equipped with Wi-Fi visit Lucas County Metropolitan Housing Authority properties to provide Internet access to families that need it.
“We’re trying to level that playing field particularly during this time when we’re looking at online learning,” he said.
Mr. Gault added that the Chromebook distribution will allow students to continue learning during the summer.
Although the administration is working to get Chromebooks in the hands of all its families, Mr. Gault said the district will continue to provide learning packets for students throughout the remainder of the school year.
TPS began distributing Chromebooks last week at Leverett Elementary and has since opened the distribution to six designated locations on Monday. The locations are:
■ East Broadway Elementary School, 1755 E. Broadway St.
■ Leverette Elementary School, 445 E. Manhattan Blvd.
■ Jones Leadership Academy, 430 Nebraska Ave.
■ Keyser Elementary School, 3900 Hill Ave.
■ DeVeaux Elementary School, 2620 W Sylvania Ave.
■ Byrnedale Elementary School, 3635 Glendale Ave.
Distributions are from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday. For safety precautions, Mr. Gault said Chromebooks are being distributed in a drive-through manner and families are being directly contacted by the administration to schedule an appointment for pick-up. He added that the district has distributed nearly 1,000 Chromebooks and has scheduled over 900 appointments per day.
First Published April 21, 2020, 11:53 p.m.
