By Ashley M. Casey

Staff Writer

The North Syracuse Central School District is waiting for the New York State Education Department (SED) Office of Facilities Planning to approve technology capital projects under the Smart Schools Bond Act. The district is seeking to purchase 3,400 Chromebooks for student use and to install wireless Internet capabilities at Cicero-North Syracuse High School, North Syracuse Junior High School and Main Street School.

North Syracuse can apply for about $6,250,000 under the Smart Schools Bond Act. The hardware purchase is not to exceed $1,380,002 and the wireless installation is not to exceed $2,836,000. The board of education approved the plan Jan. 25 and SED has accepted the plan.

“We’re thrilled that we’ve finally got our plan accepted and we’re waiting for it to be approved,” said Don Keegan, associate superintendent for business services.

“We talk a lot about 21st century schools,” Keegan added. “There’s a need for mobility. For differentiated instruction, you almost need every child to have their own computer.”

While the district’s two middle schools and six elementary schools are “substantially wireless already,” Keegan said, expanded wireless access and Chromebook laptops are vital to keeping up with Project Lead The Way’s science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) curricula and Common Core standards.

“One of the criteria for Smart Schools [Bond Act] is that districts provide 100 megabytes of bandwidth per thousand students,” Keegan said. “In order to do that, we’ve got to put this wireless in at the high school, junior high and Main Street Early Education program.”

Pending state approval, Keegan said he hopes work can start on the wireless installation over the summer. He said old wiring must be ripped out and new wiring installed, which will take months.

Chromebooks are lightweight laptop computers that use Google’s Chrome operating system and rely largely on Internet- or cloud-based applications and software.

While the number of Chromebooks the district is seeking to buy is not enough for each of North Syracuse’s 8,800 students, the 3,400 laptops will be distributed on mobile carts throughout the district.

Keegan said the district currently has three Chromebook carts, which a handful of teachers have used in a pilot program this school year, mostly in the elementary schools.

“We had such wonderful feedback and results from the teachers who used the Chromebooks for this year,” Keegan said.