District Ready for Big Chromebook Rollout

Each and every student at East Greenwich High School is getting a new Chromebook computer this year as part of the new 1-to-1 device policy that aims to transform how students learn and complete their work each day.

And the district is ready for the huge undertaking, said Superintendent Victor Mercurio.

At last week’s School Committee meeting, the superintendent said the district is poised to roll the devices out during the first full week of school next week. The devices were set to be delivered this Thursday, Aug. 28.

Along with the appointment of a new technical support person at the school, the district has secured a third party vendor to provide support during the rollout.

Coinciding with the rollout, the school’s network has been undergoing an extensive once-over to ensure it will handle the load when students begin logging in with their assigned usernames and passwords, Mercurio said.

The network is more than ready, Mercurio said, and along with being significantly faster thanks to the installation of new switches and equipment, there are “controllers in place to watch the traffic and balance the traffic automatically so we don’t have interference and the network doesn’t’ slow down all at once.”

The devices will be pre-configured to find the network so students will immediately be able to sign on to the network and get down to business, Mercurio said.

With the support person in place to start the school year, in addition to the third-party vendor, Mercurio said there’s no reason to expect any major hiccups with the rollout, noting that the vendor has worked on rollouts of 3,000 devices at a time in the past.

School Committeewoman Deidre Gifford said that she wanted to note that the rollout comes as the district still lacks a technology director and there is a concern that if there were glitches, “we could potentially lose a whole lot of instructional time dealing with technology issues.”

Gifford, who cast the lone vote against the 1-to-1 device rollout in January, said it’s of particular concern since there are so many short weeks in the fall.

School Committee Member Jack Sommer said while Giffords concerns are valid, he believed that that the steps taken by the superintendent, notably securing the third-party vendor, should ensure a smooth rollout.

Sommer said as the chair of the committee’s Tech Committee, he shared similar concerns, but now, “I’m satisfied,” he said.