An initiative to expand technology in Eudora classrooms that has been underway for years may be gaining some traction.

Eudora School Board President Eric Votaw said the time is right to move forward on plans the board has been discussing for a few years now. The board voted unanimously at its meeting Wednesday to allow bids for a student technology initiative spearheaded by Ron Long, the district’s technology director.

The schools currently function on a cart-based model, meaning all laptops are stored on mobile carts that are shared between classrooms. In Long’s plan, the district would first purchase enough new Dell Chromebook laptops to bring Eudora High School to a 1-to-1 student-to-device ratio. Each of the approximately 460 high school students would have his or her own laptop to bring to school every day and use for homework in the evenings.

The second part of the plan would redistribute the existing mobile cart fleet from the high school to the middle and elementary schools using a process the district has called “waterfalling.” Additionally, some iPads would be distributed to the pre-K, kindergarten and first grades.

“We already own all of that stuff,” Long said. “We’re just moving chess pieces around.”

Votaw said he and other board members have visited other Kansas schools to ask questions, see how these types of plans look in practice and learn more about the outcomes of putting a device in each student’s hand.

“Our concerns were alleviated because there are really quite simple solutions to those problems,” he said. “… We could see hands-down that once these devices go into the students’ hands, each student becomes fully engaged in each and every classroom, whereas that has not really ever been the case in the history of education, as far as I can tell.”

Votaw visited Spring Hill Middle School and said the two things that stuck out to him were teachers’ ability to make sure each student was engaging in real-time by having them type responses throughout the class, and how they could record lectures ahead of time if they knew there would be a substitute the next day.

“Those are two of tens of different advantages we saw right away that came from having that device available,” Votaw said.

As with most initiatives in Kansas school districts right now, funding is an issue, and 466 laptops isn’t a minor purchase. Based on a ballpark estimate from numbers in a previous purchase, Long’s plan lists a possible total of around $140,000, though he noted that number could definitely change.

However, Votaw said the influx of cash from the district’s 2014 sale of the Nottingham property at 14th and Church streets to the city of Eudora, at an approximate total of $850,000, means that the district could feasibly fund this plan right now.

“Honestly, I don’t think we’d be in a position to jump-start this process if we didn’t have that influx of funds as a result of the sale of the property,” he said.

After the initial purchase, the board would also have to budget to sustain the program. Long said enrollment continues to increase, and the district’s biggest hurdle would be adding more devices to keep up.

Votaw said there are some options for that, as well. He said if the board allotted a small portion of its capital outlay funds and collected an ongoing technology fee from each student, those two revenue streams would help sustain the program going forward.

Long said reducing the student-to-device ratio is in the district’s strategic plan, and it’s one of his primary goals. A 1-to-1 ratio “gets rid of the haves and have-nots,” he said.

“I, personally, as the tech director in the education space do think that students that do not have equitable access to technology throughout the day have a disadvantage over students in other districts that do,” he said.

Starting with the 1-to-1 ratio at the high school will help to address one aspect of college and career readiness, which has been a focus statewide, Votaw said.

Eudora is not the only Douglas County district grappling with a growing need for technology. Lawrence schools have focused on improving their device-to-student ratios this year, and in February, district officials said funds have been budgeted to ensure any students who need access to laptops or Wi-Fi hotspots will have them, starting next school year.

Other than a few questions about logistics, Votaw said feedback he’s heard from parents and teachers has been “overwhelmingly positive.”

“(The teachers) were ready to go when the option was given to them; there wasn’t a whole lot of hesitation as the board deliberated through this, and we wanted to make sure we had buy-in from the teachers,” he said. “… They all had good ideas in mind already how they wanted to implement it, so that helped us sort of come to this point as well.”

Both Long and Votaw said they are optimistic about the plan’s odds.

This week, Long will send out an RFP. He’ll come up with a recommendation for the board’s next meeting, slated for April 14. If the board approves, Long will proceed with ordering the devices, setting them up and having them ready in time for the first full day of the 2016-2017 school year — Aug. 17.

And if not, “we’ll take a step back and basically continue what we’re doing now, which is just making the best use of what we have,” Long said.

The Eudora School Board generally meets at 7 p.m. on the second Thursday of each month at 1310 Winchester Road, Room 108. Board agendas are available online at www.eudoraschools.org.