The new superintendent resolved an impassioned standoff among
trustees in her first day in office and increased the chance that
the new Las Animas Elementary School will open its doors in
September with computers in its classrooms.
Gilroy – The new superintendent resolved an impassioned standoff among trustees in her first day in office and increased the chance that the new Las Animas Elementary School will open its doors in September with computers in its classrooms.
Trustees voted 5-1 to purchase 578 new and replacement computers for about $406,000 at eight schools, including Las Animas, during a Thursday night board meeting that featured seven public speakers.
The board began the night divided, as it was when it cast a split vote on the purchase at a June meeting. With another split vote, Las Animas would have likely been left without any computers when it opened its doors in September. However, superintendent Deborah Flores engineered a compromise that satisfied both sides and moved the issue forward.
“It’s a very complicated issue,” trustee Rhoda Bress said. “I thought she did an excellent job analyzing all the issues that had come up about technology at our school site.”
When a resolution on the purchase first came up in mid-June, trustees were divided regarding whether the district should buy 678 computers at $475,956 for eight school sites.
In one camp were board president Tom Bundros, Bress and trustee Denise Apuzzo, who insisted they would not vote for the resolution until district staff and administrators supplied information on the effectiveness of computers in the classroom as an instructional tool.
In the other camp were trustees Javier Aguirre, Pat Midtgaard and Jaime Rosso, who wanted the same information, but were content to approve the expenditure first. The reasons they gave for this exception included that some of the funds for computers were coming from specific school budgets and that voting against the resolution would likely result in Las Animas students working without computers when school starts in September.
Concerns regarding the effectiveness of technology should have been raised in March when the board directed staff to do the legwork that led to this resolution, Aguirre said.
“I’m concerned about the mixed messages we give to staff,” he said at the June meeting.
After trustees arrived at a split-vote on the resolution, they decided to bring it back at the July meeting, when they expected trustee Francisco Dominguez to be present and cast as a deciding vote. However, Dominguez was also absent from Thursday night’s meeting because of illness.
Flores, who had been present at the June meeting though she was not yet superintendent, preempted a longer standoff by reorganizing the resolution so that trustees voted on the purchase of computers at each school site rather than as a package.
With this modification, trustees approved computers at seven schools with the majority of the funds coming from a $1 million Microsoft settlement reserved for hardware purchases. However, the 241 new computers proposed for the new Las Animas, which drew from a $69 million bond approved by voters in 2002, again split the board.
Bundros, again joined by Bress and Apuzzo, rehashed earlier concerns regarding the efficacy of technology as a teaching tool. However, Apuzzo also voiced worry that approving this number of computers, which worked out to eight per classroom, would set an expensive precedent for other schools looking for technology. Most other schools have four or fewer computers per classroom.
At Flores’ suggestion, trustees voted on a proposal that would put in 141 computers, or four per classroom, at Las Animas. The purchase passed 5-1, with Bress the lone dissenter.
Yet, while compromise was reached, Flores honored trustees’ worries about the effectiveness of technology in the classroom. To address these concerns, she suggested the formation of a technology committee comprised of teachers, parents and residents. In addition, district staff would supplement the committee’s findings with their own research.
“You may still have some concerns and we want you to know we’re committed to addressing those over the next six months to a year,” Flores said.
