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BY HILLARY VIDERS
SPECIAL TO NORTHERN VALLEY PRESS
Englewood, New Jersey — Last week, the Englewood Public School District (EPSD) signed a $3.6 million agreement with Apple to enable each of the district’s 3,000 students as well as its 325 teachers to have a new Apple device.
On Feb. 22, at the Dwight Morrow High School, the EPSD distributed new MacBook Air laptops to all of the district’s teachers.
Four days later, all students in the district were given laptops and iPads, catapulting EPSD’s ranking as one of the most technologically advanced districts in New Jersey.
“There are not many districts in this county that have this many devices that are brand new and rolled out at once,” Superintendent Robert Kravitz said. “It’s part of our effort to change the culture of success here.”
Of the $3.6 million investment, the district is spending $2.9 million on MacBook Air laptops, iPads, Apple TVs and other equipment and the rest on a long-term partnership with Apple that will open a technical support “Genius Bar” for the city at Dwight Morrow High School.
Apple’s five-year contract with the district calls for a $725,000 down payment followed by annual payments of $583,698 through the 2022-23 school year.
To prepare for the technology influx, the district also spent $1 million on upgrading its infrastructure.
“We’ve redone our entire network,” Kravitz said. “We are really set to fly with our system.”
Apple will have professional development staff in Englewood for the next 12 months to train all teachers in the district. Apple technicians will also train some students to repair computers.
Before this initiative began, students in the lower grades shared devices during Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, commonly known as PARCC exams. Some took the standardized test on rented computers. Now, a large percentage of students will have the opportunity to practice taking the computer-based assessment on a computer, which gives them a huge advantage.
“We know for a fact that this can affect their scoring,” Kravitz said.
Dwight Morrow High School Principal Billy Bowie says that the new computers will give everyone greater access to resources.
“Instruction is what matters, and we’re looking to make these devices enhance that,” Bowie says. “We’re excited about how these devices will allow our teachers to do what they do even better. They will also bring our district unification and distinction.”
School athletics will also benefit from the new computers. Richard Suchanski, DMHS athletic director, said, “These computers will be great to streamline materials, such as game footage films that we use in other schools. It will also help with our scheduling.”
John LaRusso, the DMHS assistant basketball coach, added, “We have 50 boys and 20-plus girls in the high school basketball program, and these computers will help us be more interactive. We can use technology to teach in the classrooms and we can use it to scout teams.”
The new computers will also allow high school students looking for hands-on experience in technology or business to learn directly from Apple professionals working with the district. Kravitz expects that those students will eventually help operate the planned Genius Bar.
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Up and running
As the launch of the partnership between the school district and Apple began, on Feb. 22, teachers met Apple representatives for orientation and training sessions at the Dwight Morrow High School. The entire school district attended this strategic all-day session. After all district staff members lined up by school to receive their MacBook Air laptops with carrying cases, they were shown how to boot up the new devices by Apple engineers.
The entire group next moved to the auditorium where an official welcome and opening kickoff was presented by Kravitz. Elated by this educational coup, he said, “This is a new day in Englewood. With the distribution of 3,000 laptops and 800 iPads, Englewood will be the second or third largest Apple district in the State of New Jersey.”
Kravitz continued, “But we’re not done. We are going to change the way we do things. We are going to be better than everyone else, which is our goal. I started here 849 days ago, but before I started, I said two words to everybody: ‘Thank you. Thank you for making a difference.’ Today, I want to thank you all again for coming here to help change the world and to help make Englewood the best school district in New Jersey.”
After Kravitz’s speech, Victor LaBozzetta from Apple gave an “out of the box” presentation, which introduced everyone to the basics of the new computers. This was followed by a lunch break and two more training sessions by Apple representatives on reaching all learners through accessibility raising the bar for learning with technology.
An ‘Apple’ a day
Even the youngest students will receive an educational boost from the new Apple devices. On Feb. 26, Apple representatives began giving out iPads to 4- to 6- year-old preschool children at the Donald A. Quarles Early Childhood Center on Davison Place.
As soon as the preschoolers got their new Apple iPads, they immediately started to work with them. Even the 4 year olds got busy drawing letters of the alphabet and pictures with great enjoyment.
Quarles Principal Arlene Ng said, “This Apple equipment that our students now have will support our Steps2Brilliance Literacy Program. The iPads feature over 1,000 games, books and songs in Spanish and English. Our teachers also have the MacBook Air laptops that they will use for math, and all of our 35 classrooms now have an Apple TV [a wireless network appliance and entertainment device that can receive digital data from a number of sources and stream it to a capable television]. This is a big leap forward from the equipment that we had.”
Photos by Hillary Viders