Come get your new laptop!
The University Heights Charter School in Newark is giving out new computers to its 850 students, Pre-K through middle school, to make sure everyone is prepared for remote learning.
Schools Chief Christy Oliver-Hawley said it was a dire situation. “Many of our students used loaner laptops that we had in our district, they may not have been the most up-to-date but it was something for them to use,” she said. “Some of our students had to use their tablets at home, some of them had to even use cell phones.”
The school paid $200,000 for the laptops, which are Chromebooks, and also bought 100 hotspots for students who don’t have Internet access. Oliver-Hawley said though that no student has had to repeat a grade because of the pandemic. “Fortunately our students, you know, have been able to move to the next grade level,” she said. “What we did as a school and are doing, we are administering a plethora of multiple assessments actually, to determine where our students are.”
She said parents will be going to school too. “We are having a town hall for parents as well on how to utilize these Chromebooks and our online learning platforms at home,” said Oliver-Hawley.
In 2018, 10,000,000 students in the US didn’t have an adequate device for learning at home, according to a study by education nonprofit Common Sense Media.