SDOC expanding One to One Initiative

More students in the School District of Oconee County (SDOC) will soon be going home with Chromebooks. This week at their monthly meeting, the Board of Trustees for the SDOC approved expanding the One to One Initiative, explains Assistant Superintendent of Operations Steve Hanvey. “We started the One to One Initiative with Chromebooks in our high schools this year and each of our high school students has a Chromebook and we’ve tried to push it down as much as we can. We asked the board, we actually after our audit had received some extra funding from the state and local government that we didn’t anticipate when we prepared our budget. So, rather than putting all that money in the fund balance, we asked if we could use up $600,000 of it to finish the One to One Initiative for grades 3-12. So, that would give all third through twelfth graders with an individual Chromebook. We think by the end of it we will have enough for our first and second graders as well but that is kind of still looking at a numbers game. But we think that it is very important that we push that initiative down to our lower grades and get all our students a Chromebook and we are excited that the board thought the same thing and has approved the funding to allow us to do that.” Hanvey tells when he hopes to roll out the expanded initiative. “Well, the goal is now that they have approved it we would try to get them ordered as quickly as possible but most likely it will be the first of next year before we get them to the individual students in the elementary schools and all the middle schools. Some of our middle school grades in individual schools already have One to One through Chromebooks they were able to purchase themselves with their own funding. But before we can fully roll it out it is probably going to be August.” Through the One to One Technology Initiative, students in the SDOC are issued a Chromebook that they use at school as well as take home.