Corey Conley
For The Gallatin Newspaper

The Sumner County Board of Education could be coming to a computer near you, if plans to put the board’s meeting videos online come to fruition.

The move is just one the challenges the body is facing in bringing more technology to the county school system.

Other changes are in response to Tennessee joining 40 other states in adopting “Common Core” standards that will require every school incorporate technology into their testing process.

 Jeremy Johnson, the district’s Board and Community Relations Supervisor, said that two of the best options were a special government access channel on YouTube and a more robust standalone service called “SchoolTube.”

 The SchoolTube service would cost $1,000, but offers greater flexibility than YouTube.

Johnson said there was interest in using the service in the classroom, not just the boardroom, to allow classes to make and post videos as part of the curriculum.

   YouTube has one serious drawback.

“The problem with Youtube is that it is blocked in our schools, and it probably needs to continue to be blocked in our schools because there is a lot of things that kids can access that they don’t need to,” explained Johnson.

  Another, far bigger technological challenge facing the district is the cluster of new demands placed by new state standards.

The Common Core standards were adopted by Tennessee as part of a national, state-level push to create parity between the academic standards in each state. Currently, every state develops its own curriculum standards, leading to a patchwork of standards that makes it hard to compare what works and what doesn’t.

“By the 2014-15 academic year every school in Tennessee must have the technology infrastructure to test students online. Both the states and districts must begin thinking about how they will ensure that every school has the Internet bandwidth and the computers to administer such tests,” said Assistant Director for Instruction Judy Wheeler.

  The new infrastructure will not come cheap.

“It is an understatement to say that it will likely take thoughtful budgetary planning,” said Wheeler.

 “If we took the requests we’ve had already in our local school budget meetings, $3  million wouldn’t touch what people are asking for, and it absolutely won’t touch what is going to be required for us to do assessments online with every student that’s in a testing grade or a testing content area.”

   9The Common Core standards were adopted by Tennessee as part of a national, state-level push to create parity between the academic standards in each state. Currently, every state develops its own curriculum standards, leading to a patchwork of standards that makes it hard to compare what works and what doesn’t.

“By the 2014-15 academic year every school in Tennessee must have the technology infrastructure to test students online. Both the states and districts must begin thinking about how they will ensure that every school has the Internet bandwidth and the computers to administer such tests,” said Assistant Director for Instruction Judy Wheeler.

  The new infrastructure will not come cheap.

“It is an understatement to say that it will likely take thoughtful budgetary planning,” said Wheeler.

 “If we took the requests we’ve had already in our local school budget meetings, $3  million wouldn’t touch what people are asking for, and it absolutely won’t touch what is going to be required for us to do assessments online with every student that’s in a testing grade or a testing content area.”

   Common Core requires that students take online assessments at regular intervals throughout the year to measure progress, rather than just at the end of the school year.

    District 10 representative Glen Gregory estimated that getting the district up to speed on technology could easily top  $10 million dollars, and board Vice-Chair Danny Hale felt that the price tag would be $7 million just for the basics.

 “That does not include an abundance of educational technology in the classroom; that’s building the highway, not putting the cars on the road,” said Hale of the figure.

   Although the price tag seems daunting, Wheeler said all it would take to fund the changes is a modest percentage Sumner County taxes.

“We talk about how wonderful it would be to ask for a nickel and hope for a penny. Anything that would be a predictable amount year to year,” said Wheeler.

Nothing that the federal stimulus money used to bolster education is 2010 would be gone, she emphasized the importance of a consistent source of funding.

“One of the things school districts ask of their funding bodies is that they dedicate a specific amount of property tax to the acquisition and training and use of technology so that there is always a predictable stream of revenue to come in.”

 “I don’t know if it’s an opportune time to ask,” responded Hale, but he pointed to the fact that the County Commission was reassessing upwards some property values, which give commissioners more freedom.

“About two pennies (out of each property tax assessment) dedicated to technology would just do wonders to keep us up to speed with technology,” asserted Hale.