Lafourche Parish schools lag in technology

THIBODAUX, La. (AP) - Lafourche Parish schools aren’t technology-ready but district officials say improvements are in the works.

Last week, the state Department of Education issued a statewide technology readiness report that showed the district’s 28 public schools are lagging in student-to-device ratio and Internet bandwidth speeds.

The report says 47 of the state’s 69 parish school systems currently meet minimum standards of technology readiness.

Lafourche, The Daily Comet reported (https://bit.ly/1aVkaUu), doesn’t meet the seven students per one computer ratio required, according to the state.

“One of the things that determine if a district is ready is that all schools meet a 7-1 ratio,” said Barry Landry, a spokesman for the education department. “So if you have 10 schools and one of them does not meet that ratio then they are not considered ready but making progress.”

But Lafourche’s Information Technology manager, Ben Gautreaux, takes issue with that.

Counting all computer devices in the schools, he said, “I feel very comfortable in telling you that in the high schools we have a 3-1 ratio; middle schools, a 3-1; and elementary, 2-1 ratio.”

The state’s report considered the number of computers in a testing environment like a lab or a library, whether the computer was mobile enough to be moved into a testing environment and the device’s operating system.

“Those numbers refer to how many computers we have in a testing environment, not classrooms. We don’t count those because they are not in a testing environment,” he said.

The district has 7,500 desktop computers and 2,700 notebooks in its classrooms, he said, compared to 1,476 desktops and 4,696 laptops the state counts as test ready.

Lafourche, and the other state’s other public school districts, are expected to meet technology requirements to become compatible with the computer-based Common Core-aligned test for college and career readiness that will be conducted next year.

That means computers operating off Windows XP need to be upgraded to Windows 7. Lafourche is in the process of doing that, Gautreaux said.

The district is upgrading more than 100 devices in Lafourche high schools and ordering more than 300 new computers to incorporate into lab environments for testing, he said.

Gautreaux said the district is also in the process of speeding up its computers.

The state says schools need a minimum of 50 kilobits of Internet bandwidth per second per student for testing but recommends 100 kilobits for daily classroom instruction.

A company is installing a fiber network that will be operational by July 1, Gautreaux said.

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Information from: Daily Comet, https://www.dailycomet.com