White Co Schools Considered a 1:1 District For Devices

The White County School District has achieved a 1:1 ratio for laptops in the student body.

Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger said the push began about four years ago. Dronebarger said the influx of federal COVID money sped up the process.

“Some of those are in Chromebook carts, and some of those are more in lab settings, but there are enough machines that we can do one to one,” Dronebarger said. “We are one to one as far as our 8th through 12th grade goes. We started a program recently that our 8th graders are all assigned a Chromebook and then they carry them all through their years in high school.”

Dronebarger said once a student graduates, they keep the laptop. As for younger grades, Dronebarger said students may not be assigned a laptop but computer access is always available.

“It’s good to see us get to that point,” Dronebarger said. “In this day in age, so many of the textbooks have just gone digital. There are many of our classrooms that aren’t even using traditional textbooks. anymore. It is all online. It has been ushered in a little quicker than some districts may have planned to, but the influx of ESSER dollars has helped us make that happen.”

Dronebarger said the pandemic has heightened the need to be a 1:1 school system. Dronebarger said through COVID, the district has learned just how much can be accomplished online.

“We had to as our students went home for a while and many students when they were sick and teachers when they were home sick were having to work from home,” Dronebarger said. “It pushed us into that category a little faster.”