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Guest column: Yes to one device per child, no to property tax increase

Posted at 2:38 pm June 15, 2014
By Oak Ridge Today Guest Columns 6 Comments

Aditya "Doc" Savara

Aditya “Doc” Savara

By Aditya “Doc” Savara

On June 2, Dr. Bruce Borchers, the superintendent overseeing Oak Ridge Schools, presented a 2015 school budget plan to City Council, which included a request for a property tax increase of about 15 percent. Landlords would presumably pass this increase onto renters as well.

The justification for this tax increase is to pay for thousands of touchscreen tablet computers and notebook computers: one for each child in our school system for most age ranges. The idea is bold and expensive. The revolutionary change is based on the following three premises:

  1. Our children need to be “technology-ready” for the future with sufficient experience to make such technology feel “ordinary” to them.
  2. These devices may have educational benefits in our schools.
  3. When parents are trying to decide where they will live, parents might choose a city that follows a one-device-per-child policy.

I taught at Northwestern University, where I won department-wide and college-wide teaching awards. Based on my teaching experience, I was initially against one device per child, because I did not think such devices would improve learning, certainly not enough to justify such an expense (my experience is that better teachers and better students result in better learning).

But then I thought about it more, and I realized something: There are great videos online for subjects like the quadratic equation, integrals, philosophy concepts, how our government works, etc. Having a sample problem explained in real-time—by a great teacher in a video—can be far more valuable to the student than looking at the textbook and trying to remember. I know this firsthand, I have used videos of upper-level university problems to refresh my memory or learn something from a different field.

Imagine this situation, which I have engaged in: The teacher gives a lecture with sample problems, then lets the students work out more problems on their own. The teacher walks around helping those who need help and answering questions, while other students wait or struggle if they are stuck until the teacher gets to them. Now, imagine a situation where students can watch sample problems being worked out online, on a tablet computer, while they are waiting. The teacher still walks around, but now five times as many students can be helped at the same time, and the students being helped by videos can even be watching examples of totally different types of problems relative to their neighboring students. This benefit alone would be worth $500 per student per year, and our real costs per device could be lower than that. What about the other rationales?

Undoubtedly, habitual exposure would make students more comfortable with the emerging computer operating systems. The difference between a student or a worker who knows the current technology well and one who does not can be dramatic, and can play a large role in our students’ future. Our students will be able to accomplish more and will be able to impress their superiors at college and in the work place if they have next-generation computer knowledge; otherwise, our students may come across as underprepared.

What about the third reason? If I were not already living in Oak Ridge, I would absolutely consider moving to Oak Ridge due to incorporation of computer devices into the curriculum. This third motive that Dr. Borchers presented, attracting parents to our city, opened my eyes to our school system’s need to adopt a one-device-per-child curriculum in order for our city to remain competitive. But I do not support the tax increase.

I do not support the tax increase because not everybody can easily afford this. The tax increase would even be imposed on people who live below the poverty line! Are we really going to ask people who are struggling to help pay for the tablets of well-off families’ children?

Additionally, the proposed plan includes a request to hire several technology maintenance staff (many hundreds of thousands of dollars—not teachers, but people to call up when the computers have a problem). The money for this increase would then became a permanent fixture in the school budget based on state laws—saddling our city under the so-called “maintenance of effort” clause. Caution for hiring new costly staff is merited.

There are some city employees who have a track record of being good stewards of our tax money. There is an employee in our city’s IT department named Adam who has worked for the city for seven years and was promoted to a managerial position two years ago. He has been doing such a diligent job of turning around our city’s IT department, and holding our city’s IT consultants to doing a complete job, that I recently shook his hand after a City Council meeting and thanked him for the good work that he is doing.

So here is my proposal: If we need IT staff to service the thousands of devices we’ll be purchasing, and these staff are not teachers, then let’s hire appropriate technology helpers under the city’s general fund or a technology fund and put them under Adam, making the tech helpers freely available to the school system with no hourly charge. That will be a win for the city and a win for the schools. I believe that Adam will not ask to pay the tech helpers any exorbitant salaries (and City Council can make sure that is the case), creating a win for the taxpayers.

Dr. Borchers’s plan includes leasing the devices for four years, instead of buying the devices, since the devices might become out of date. This might be a wise decision if we can get a good lease price. We should be cautious as many computer leases charge the entire cost of the device per year. Here is my suggestion: Make a voluntary technology fee set at a value of 1.5 times the average device leasing price (with oversight of the contract price by the technology helpers under Adam), with the money paid annually by students’ parents who can afford it into a technology fund, from which the devices will be purchased for all students. Then, people like myself who want this curriculum for their kids and can afford it will happily pay a couple of hundreds of dollars per year per child, and there will be no need for a tax increase. We may even attract families who have bought houses in Farragut. Would parents in Farragut move to Oak Ridge for a one-device-per-child curriculum and pay a voluntary $200 annual technology fee? You can bet that I would if I was in their shoes.

Savara is running for Oak Ridge City Council, and he lives in Oak Ridge. You can read more of his views here.

Filed Under: Education, Government, Guest Columns, K-12, Oak Ridge, Opinion Tagged With: Aditya "Doc" Savara, Bruce Borchers, computer devices, curriculum, notebook computers, Oak Ridge, Oak Ridge City Council, Oak Ridge Schools, one device per child, property tax increase, school budget, tax increase, technology ready, touchscreen tablet computers, videos

Comments

  1. Mike Mahathy says

    June 15, 2014 at 11:18 pm

    Not one cent of the requested tax increase was to buy devices. It did call for upgrades to IT infrastructure to be paid by that.

    But Doc, I commend you for offering ideas!

    Reply
  2. Dave Smith says

    June 16, 2014 at 1:42 am

    Like Mike Mahathy, I commend “Doc” for offering ideas and alternative solutions, especially when done without demonizing school officials and calling into question the motives of those who advocate for excellence in the ORS.

    That being said, I think there are several unworkable aspects of Doc’s proposed “voluntary technology fee” strategy for funding the computer leases. First, the administration of such a plan would be nightmarish. Second, a large number of students in ORS are considered economically disadvantaged and nearly half of the school population is enrolled in free or reduced-price lunch programs. It’s safe to say that there are many others that are close to impoverished. That would perhaps leave fewer than half the parents in the “voluntary fee” pool. And many parents have more than one child in the schools, which would hamper their ability to pay 1.5 times the fee for each child. Third, he is in all probability overestimating the altruism of parents. And, finally, establishing a technology fee, even if it is “voluntary,” would be close to violating state law and the policy of the Tennessee State Board of Education policy on school fees, which stipulate that payment of “school fees” may not be a condition to using the [instructional] equipment of a public school.

    Reply
    • Aditya "Doc" Savara says

      June 16, 2014 at 10:36 pm

      you may be correct about my being overly optimistic, but in that case we could still be partially subsidized by public taxes and partially by voluntary fees. Regarding the fees not being a condition to use the equipment: in my proposal the fees are not a condition, every student gets the same access regardless of whether their family pays the fee or not.

      Reply
      • Dave Smith says

        June 16, 2014 at 11:38 pm

        I understood that you meant that all students would have access, regardless of whether their family pays. I certainly did not mean to misrepresent your solution.

        There is some relevant history in Oak Ridge. Like many Tennessee communities, OR once had a pay-to-ride bus service for students. In some ways it was also a voluntary payer system, with economically disadvantaged students paying less or nothing. (I don’t recall hearing of a student who was refused bus service because his parents could not or would not pay, but no doubt there were some instances of such. Lots of kids walked to school in those days, too; it was an early form of Play 60, I suppose.) If I’m not mistaken the pay-to-ride system was a casualty of the state law, which has been interpreted in many cases as stipulating that all students must pay the same amount or they must pay nothing. Similar situations occurred regarding student payment for field trips, athletic uniforms, and after-school activities. The decision to eliminate the pay-to-ride or pay-to-play systems was probably inspired by the state law and state BOE regulations, but there was another factor at work as well. As long as I can remember there has been a significant concern in the ORS that all students should have the same access to educational opportunities, regardless of their economic circumstances. Maybe that’s why we have accrued such a large percentage of economically disadvantaged students in the schools, especially when compared to the systems in the surrounding communities. There has been equal educational opportunity in the ORS as long as I’ve been here. Now I fear the budget hawks and school-system opponents have a mind to cripple this egalitarian philosophy. I hope you won’t be prejudiced by their rhetoric.

        Reply
        • Jeanne Hicks Powers says

          June 17, 2014 at 7:34 pm

          Oh please…. we are ALL in this together! There’s been enough division in OR. it’s time for ALL of us to get together and seek solutions that we can ALL live with…. and afford.

          Reply
  3. Rick Hasbrouck says

    June 16, 2014 at 8:53 am

    Why not get corporate sponsorship to purchase/lease the tablets?

    Reply

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