One of the biggest obstacles any education decision maker must face is the budget. Striking a balance between maintaining costs and providing the tools students and teachers need to succeed can be daunting, but not impossible.
Here we speak with Caroline Lightfoot, director of technology at Dickinson ISD in Texas, about her efforts to build equity within her 12,000-student district by providing appropriate tools and programs to all schools and using Schoology for blended learning.
Lightfoot was recently recognized as Most Innovative CTO in tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit with a Innovative Leader Award.
Updates across the board
Some days it may seem impossible to keep up with the tools that will have the greatest impact on education. However, by organizing your resources to provide appropriate tools and programs to every student and teacher within a district (regardless of campus age), everyone can enjoy the same levels of education. Lightfoot explains how she accomplished this goal in her own district.
“We tend to fund our new campuses for technology, and they can get the latest and greatest technology,” Lightfoot says. “So when I became executive director of our department, we really wanted to start spreading that across campuses and not just in our new buildings. So we looked at the era of the devices and where the work orders were and started analyzing them from there.”
Lightfoot and her team were able to upgrade half of the campuses last year and plan to have everyone on board by February, with the exception of some high school teachers.
Why was it so important to make this change within the district?
“All of our teachers deserve the latest and greatest technology,” Lightfoot says. “Also, we are under a bit of pressure because we have a lot of old desktop computers that are not compatible with the systems we are replacing. We needed to replace them anyway. “This was a great opportunity to be able to do that and have brighter, more portable technology in our classrooms.”
<h2 id="challenges-of-updating-tech-3″>Challenges of technological updating
Taking on challenges comes with the territory when it comes to education. Lightfoot experienced her own obstacles in reworking her district's technology.
“We're in Texas,” Lightfoot says. “And, like many districts I know across the country, we are in that education funding crisis. We have to be quite creative with some financing. So at first we funded it with our technology budget, but we also asked (money from federal programs) to help with our teachers.”
The challenge then is to spend the money to best support the learning objectives.
“Like so many other districts, we've been moving toward that blended learning model,” Lightfoot says. “We're definitely there, but it turns out that Schoology is our preferred learning management system here at Dickinson. We have many procedures to make things easier for teachers. After COVID, people joined online learning. “It has really been great to see them grow, thrive, and integrate different tools within Schoology that we also have here in our district.”
A focus on equity
Ideally, all schools, teachers and students should have access to the same tools and programs to provide the same level of education across the board. Many districts struggle to maintain a level of equity that enhances these goals.
“It's just about making it clear that what needs to happen is (achieving equity) and getting all the people in your district on board with it,” Lightfoot says. “It's time for all educators to realize that there are occasional funding items that get in the way, but we've also been able to standardize equipment so things aren't such a hodgepodge. “It makes things easier and more efficient.”
Bringing equity to a school district doesn't always mean breaking the budget to put the latest technology in your schools, but having the mindset that you want to elevate your district's schools equally can help advance the technology you have without breaking the mold. budget. It also means that getting everyone in your district on the same page can make a big difference in agreeing how to move forward.
