Federal Grant to Supply Middle School With Dozens of New Laptops

Russell O. Brackman Middle School will be getting 52 new laptops next month, thanks to a federal Title I grant, school officials said. 

The state’s recently released showed that in the 2009-10 school year, the middle school had fewer computers relative to its student population than the state average. There was a computer for every 4.5 students at Brackman, while there was one for every 3.6 students statewide. 

Brackman Principal Stephen Nichol and district technology coordinator Jonathan Jones said administrators knew the school needed more than the two computer labs and one mobile laptop cart it currently has.

“We were going to put a third lab in, but the money’s just not there,” said Jones. 

But district supervisor of curriculum and instruction Karen McKeon successfully applied to use some of Barnegat’s federal Title I funds – available to the schools nationwide with a certain percentage of low-income students – to bring two new mobile computer labs to the school. 

“It takes the burden off the local budget,” Jones said. 

The computer carts, which Nichol likes to call “COWs” – computers on wheels – will arrive next month, he said, tripling the number of laptops currently in the school. 

Jones said each mobile unit has 26 laptops, all wirelessly connected to the Internet.  Teachers can sign a cart out, wheel it into the classroom and gets kids online where they sit – no need to trek down the hall and assign students to computers in the lab.

The new carts will be used specifically for the school’s basic skills program, allowing students to access online educational tools for math and science that both instruct and allow teachers to evaluate learning. 

Every school in the district has a similar cart already, Jones said, including the elementary schools, which have been making use of smaller netbook laptops. The carts, which include printers and other equipment, run about $35,000 apiece, he said.

“They seem to love them,” Jones.