Bethel Park School Board members likely to get Chromebooks

Bethel Park School Board will likely agree to purchase new Chromebooks for teachers and school board members as well as new network equipment at its meeting Oct. 27.
The Chromebooks, which are relatively inexpensive laptop computers running Google’s operating system, will be added to the district’s vast inventory of laptops that it purchased for students’ use over the past two years. Bethel Park wanted to implement more technology into the curriculum, so it set aside $1.3 million to buy about 3,900 Chromebooks for every middle and high school student to take home and use.
That technology push will extend to the school board. Nine Chromebooks, at about $350 each, will likely be purchased for the school board members. Bethel Park will also buy about 16 more Chromebooks to replace older MacBooks that some social studies teachers are using.
Buying laptops for school directors’ use will reduce paper consumption and eliminate the need to hand deliver reams of documents to the board members’ homes, said School Director Jim Means.
The additional computers in the school district have increased Internet traffic and tested Bethel Park’s network infrastructure, particularly at Independence Middle School. The school board will consider spending up to $20,000 to add about 20 additional Internet access points.
“As the utilization of the technology goes up, the problem gets worse,” said Ron Reyer Jr., the school district’s director of technology.
Much of the district’s network equipment is about five years old and it serves the district’s needs for now, but Reyer said major improvements to the infrastructure might be needed in two years or so, as the demand for bandwidth increases.
The board will also consider buying a new truck to plow snow and be used for other maintenance tasks. The new truck will replace one that is about 16 years old and has fallen into disrepair. The district has about $70,000 budgeted for the purchase.