BY JEFF CHUDZINSKI

North Country This Week

MASSENA — Massena Central School District officials finalized allocations for the Smart Schools Bond Act funds the district received, allowing for technology upgrades district wide.

Board of education members recently finalized the spending plan and are set to purchase 81 smart boards, which will cost a total of $291,519. Those smart boards will be distributed amongst all schools in the district.

Also included in the purchase is 2,054 Dell Chromebooks for a total cost of $656,807.58, along with 1,410 Chromebook chargers at an expense of $42,300 total. Total costs for the three buys will be $990,626.58.

That wraps up another round of spending of the $2.4 million grant which has allowed school officials to complete several technological upgrades district wide in recent years

Those upgrades included security upgrades, interactive boards, Chromebooks and Apple iPads.

According to Nicole Charleson, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment, the fund currently has just under $1 million remaining from the four application.

School officials assessed district technology needs in recent months, Charleson said.

“Mike (Allen, technology manager) and his crew do a really great job of keeping physical maps of each building to know when the hardware has been updated and also to know what needs we have going further,” Charleson said.

Part of the plan includes updates to smart boards that have not seen upgrades in five to 10 years, Charleson said.

Those boards, in the junior high and elementary schools, will come in at a cost $2000-3000 less than Clear Touches, Charleson said.

Those two boards are very similar at this point, she told board of education members.

School officials previoulsy had Vizio televisions installed in classrooms for instruction, however educators said they hindered instruction and should be replaced with interactive smart boards.

With the purchase of 2,054 Chromebooks, the district is now setup for the next four years, officials say.

“We have several Chromebooks that are basically end-of-life by this time. We kind of used them to their capacity and we have a hard time getting parts for them. So, this is going to offset what we need to get back in the swing of things,” Allen said.

The purchase of additional chargers as well will give the district extras in case some go missing, a common problem according to Charleson.

“I think chargers have legs because they disappear often. Sometimes we get the Chromebook back and it doesn’t have the charger. So, we were really hoping to kind of create a little stash,” Charleson said.

School officials say the purchases will ensure students are successful and have the resources they need moving forward.