Christmas comes early for CCHS seniors

By TONY STINNETT Courier Education Editor

Christmas will come early for seniors at Cannon County High School.

Every senior at CCHS will receive a new Chromebook laptop in December as part of the One-to-One Laptop Initiative. The senior class is being used as a pilot class for the program. According to Director of Schools Barbara Parker, every student at the high school could have a laptop in their possession in March.

"Our plan is to pilot with the senior class for (three) months and then hopefully by March every student at the high school will have a laptop," Parker said. "We are very excited about this project. One thing that makes our program unique is that students can take their laptops home at night."

Laptops for issue already are at the CCHS Library and student ID cards have been made. The laptops will be placed into cases with the student ID ready to scan. A serial number will be connected to each laptop so activity can be monitored.

Parker said there will be a meeting with all seniors Dec. 2 at CCHS. An additional meeting will be conducted with parents and guardians at CCHS on the evening of Dec. 2.

"We will have a meeting with all the seniors since that is our pilot class," Parker said. "The serial number will allow us to monitor them. We will randomly select students each week and they have to bring laptops into the library so our technicians can check where they have been and the sites they have viewed. All students and parents will be informed of this."

Money for the one-to-one laptop initiative will come from one-time technology money awarded to Cannon County Schools for meeting guidelines.

"We are going to use some of our one-time technology money that was given to us because we met state guidelines," Parker said. "It's not going to take all of that money. Nobody had met the guidelines and here we are as a small county and we met those guidelines so we are proud of that. We have the infrastructure the state is requiring and they had a plan. We met the infrastructure all the way through 2017."

Students will need to be responsible for their laptops and the conditions will be explained in the December meeting.
Parker said she hopes Cannon County can be used as a national model of success with this initiative.

"We know it's not going to be all smooth," Parker said. "California just took their (laptops) back away from the kids because of social media. These are not supposed to be used for social media. We don't want Cannon County to be a statistic. We want Cannon County to be a success story so the media can write about us in a good light and we can set the standard for the nation instead of following someone else."

In other business, the School Board approved Principal Karen King's request concerning a copying machine lease for West Side School. The Board also approved the Senior Trip itinerary and energy policy 3.211. They also approved East Side School's application for the General Mills Grant.

The next Board meeting Workshop will be at the Central Office Dec. 10 at 6 p.m., and the next regular School Board meeting will be Dec. 12 at 6 p.m. at Woodbury Grammar.