Around 4,000 Chromebooks arrived at the Jackson Public School District’s warehouse on Thursday as part of the state’s massive effort to provide a device for every student.
“It’s a happy day in Jackson,” said superintendent Errick Greene as he posed for a picture with fellow administrators, lawmakers and officials from the Mississippi Department of Education outside the warehouse.
The remaining 11,000 devices, which were purchased independently by the district, are scheduled to be delivered by Nov. 20, said Greene. The batch of devices delivered Thursday was ordered through the Mississippi Department of Education’s purchasing program.
The coronavirus pandemic forced districts across the state to reconsider how to operate safely this school year, and JPS made the decision to conduct school entirely virtually for the fall semester. Greene said these devices are for the nearly 5,000 students in the district who do not have a device or connectivity — particularly second graders and older.
“There are needs all over the district,” said Greene. “We’ve got about 25% of our scholars who are learning asynchronously — without a device and (using take-home) packets, that sort of thing. Our biggest priority is getting them connected.”
The district’s Chief Operating Officer Joe Albright said those students and their schools have been identified, and the devices will be delivered to those schools for parent pick up next week. Students will also be able to pick up WiFi hotspots if needed. The students who don’t receive one of the 4,000 devices delivered this week will receive one after future shipments arrive.
Around 150,000 devices of the 390,000 ordered statewide have been delivered as of Thursday, according to John Kraman, chief information officer at the Mississippi Department of Education. Another 100,000 are scheduled for next week and the remainder for the following week.
The deadline for delivery is Nov. 20, as determined by the state education department’s contract with its vendor. The deadline for schools to be reimbursed by the state for the devices is Dec. 1.
The Legislature earlier this year appropriated $200 million of Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding to the state education department to assist districts in implementing distance learning plans.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.