Lawrence High School sophomores Isaiah Hite, left, and Michael John-Clement observe a multimedia presentation on literature in teacher Keri Lauxman's World Literature class Wednesday. Using school district digital resources, members of the class work independently or as teams on a common exercise.

Nearly 10,000 students in the Lawrence public schools — about 3,000 of whom met poverty guidelines to qualify for free lunches — have digital textbooks for at least one subject. But there is no guarantee that all students have a computer or an internet connection to access the content from home.

About 20 percent of courses or subjects in the school district use digital content, and more than 90 percent of the district’s 10,500 students have at least one such subject.

All elementary and middle school students — about 7,250 students total — have digital textbooks for math and language arts, and there are no laptops or portable Wi-Fi hotspots available for those students to check out.

More than 75 percent of high school students — about 2,500 students total — have digital textbooks in one or more subjects. There are 35 laptops and 10 portable Wi-Fi hotspots available for checkout at each high school.

Most of those laptops were distributed between the two high schools last month after teachers raised concerns of unequal access — including students using cellphones to do homework assignments — for the school district’s poorest students.

Lawrence High School sophomores Isaiah Hite, left, and Michael John-Clement observe a multimedia presentation on literature in teacher Keri Lauxman's World Literature class Wednesday. Using school district digital resources, members of the class work independently or as teams on a common exercise.

Transition to digital content

For subjects with digital content, textbooks aren’t eliminated, but reduced to a classroom set of about a dozen books. This school year, digital content was rolled out in three additional subjects: algebra I at the middle and high schools, advanced placement U.S. history at the high schools and language arts at the elementary schools.

Lawrence public schools began using digital content about five years ago, as more textbook publishers began including it, said Angelique Nedved, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning. Nedved said simply relying on a single textbook is antiquated learning.

“Hopefully we’re moving past the point of belief that a single text is better and more reliable than a series of resources in a full variety of formats: videos, articles, websites, texts,” she said.

Nedved said other advantages of digital texts — in addition to teaching computer skills — include student personalization, such as the ability to highlight and make notes within the content. Nonetheless, Nedved said the district recognizes that students learn differently.

“So it’s meeting the needs of the students; some students have digital needs and some students have strictly paper needs, and some have both,” she said.

For classes with digital content, each student has access to a downloadable (allowing most of the content to be viewed without Internet), digital version of the textbook, Nedved said. The classroom sets — based on a 2-to-1 ratio of students to books — mean that for a subject with an average enrollment of 26 students, 13 books would be issued to each teacher, she explained. The 2-to-1 ratio was a starting point and could change, Nedved said.

“We’re starting an initiative, so you have to launch somewhere,” she said. “That means you’ve got to get numbers out there so you can purchase materials, and trying out how many is enough, what’s not enough, what’s too many.”

There are exceptions to the use of classroom sets, because some teachers have elected not to have any paper textbooks, Nedved said. While the district does not have a tally of how many teachers rely exclusively on digital resources, there are some classes — a middle school math class, for instance — that use no paper or digital textbook.

“The teacher may curate a variety of websites to pull content from to use,” Nedved explained.

Nedved said that for teachers with classroom sets of textbooks, they may use them at their discretion.

“Some teachers have checked out a hard copy to students who need a hard copy,” she said. “Those are case-by-case situations that we want to take into account and be cognizant of, and be sure that we address those needs.”

‘Homework gap’ for poor students

Lack of access to technology at home is a national issue, often referred to as the “homework gap.” According to the Pew Research Center, 31 percent of households with school-age children and an annual income under $50,000 lack broadband Internet access at home. For an annual income under $25,000, that number jumps to 40 percent.

In Lawrence public schools, about 40 percent of the 10,500 students are economically disadvantaged — a number that has been steadily increasing over the past five years — as measured by their enrollment in the free and reduced-price lunch program.

Most of the students in the lunch program have family incomes near or below poverty level. More than 3,000 students — or 31 percent — qualify for free lunches, according to Lawrence public schools spokeswoman Julie Boyle. To qualify for free lunches, household income must be within 130 percent of federal poverty guidelines. For instance, for a household of four, annual income must be less than $31,525 per year.

Though the district did not conduct a districtwide survey to determine how many students had reliable access to a computer and Internet at home before introducing digital content, feedback sessions were done with teachers and students, Nedved said.

“We are discovering what’s that balance of sustainable change to introduce digital content, because we know that integrating digital tools into the classroom increases student engagement and achievement,” she said.

For instance, a technology committee of district administrators and teachers has been meeting with groups of students for the past two years. Students are encouraged to share their experience with digital content and what would help them be more successful, Nedved said.

“You don’t want to leave groups of students behind who don’t interact well with technology or digital content, so how do you keep all of those needs in mind?” she asked.

Ensuring equal access

Both Lawrence and Free State high schools have devices for checkout and have begun offering extended library hours before and after school, Nedved said.

“Hopefully, via those two tools, we can address the challenges that our students face,” she said. “The reality of digital access.”

The recently expanded device checkout program at the high schools will serve as a pilot program. Lawrence schools Superintendent Rick Doll said that based on its popularity, the district may expand it.

“The word I’m getting — now that kids know that they’re there — is that there’s pretty high demand,” he said.

School board president Vanessa Sanburn said that at the elementary and middle school levels, another aspect to consider is how much work students are required to do at home. In addition, one of the school board’s yearly goals is to research the possibility of opening up more school libraries for evening hours.

A pilot program for extended library hours at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School library will begin next week, said Jerri Kemble, assistant superintendent of educational programs, in an email. Based on the information gathered from that program, South Middle School may follow, Kemble said.

Expanding device checkout is also being considered. In addition to desktop computers and classroom-specific devices, the district has about 3,000 mobile devices in communal “media carts,” said Jennifer Stones, supervisor of the department of innovation and technology, in an email. As far as making some of those devices available for checkout, Stones said the district is researching the ability to make them more accessible outside the classroom.

Additional digital content

Decisions on curriculum adoptions are made by administrators, but with teacher input, and Nedved said the needs of all students will be kept in mind as future digital content is considered.

“First, we have to accept the premise that some students prefer and perhaps even need hard copies of the text in order for them to feel that they’re learning using the approach that they’re most comfortable with,” she said.

District administrators also will continue to gather feedback from teachers and students. The technology committee is planning to meet with students in small-group sessions at all 20 schools throughout the school year and is looking at ways to make sure a cross-section of students is included, Nedved said.

“Since we have digital content K-12, we really want a broad spectrum of student input on that,” she said. “We want to hear directly from the student.”

Sanburn said as part of the school board goals, the board will receive a report on technology in the district. In the future, she said, her hope is that at the beginning of the year, it’s explicitly taken care of that all students have access to the medium they feel most comfortable with.

“I do think, going forward, if we do digital adoptions in the future, we’ll have a better system in place for determining need and filling that need,” she said.