LPOSD: Luna plan would be a 'challenge'

SANDPOINT —  A lack of Bonner County technological infrastructure could crack the foundation of proposed Idaho education reforms according to local authorities.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna featured an increased technological presence in the classroom as a highlight of his education reform plans presented earlier this month. Over the next five years, Luna’s plan would increase class sizes in grades four to twelve by one or two students annually.  Those expanding class sizes would cut a total of 770 teaching positions that could be absorbed through attrition, according to Luna.

To compensate for the reduction in staff, Luna advocates softening the blow with technology. Every ninth grader would be given a laptop, and they would be required to take online classes every year to graduate.

That increased reliance on technology has educators and developers worried about the plan’s viability in the Lake Pend Oreille School District, an region with wide discrepancies in Internet access.

“Applying this plan to the school district will be a considerable challenge,” LPO superintendent Dick Cvitanich said. “Many of our students don’t have Internet access, and many others only have access to dial-up. Speaking as a former user of dial-up, I know that’s not ideal.”

While many schools in the district have access to broadband Internet, residential Internet access is another matter altogether. Northland Communications and Frontier offer fairly high-speed connections in Sandpoint. However, many students fall outside of their service area, limiting their options to satellite, dial-up or nothing at all.

According to Cvitanich, that’s bad news in the district’s effort to provide a level educational playing field for their kids, especially when the educational forecast is calling for an increase in online classes. Students with inadequate Internet access will be forced to shape their schedule around school computer access.

“It gives students with high-speed Internet access at home a pretty clear advantage,” Cvitanich said.

Karl Dye, executive director of the Bonner County Economic Development Corporation, said that the push to build a fiber optic network this year could help some students in an Internet-reliant educational world. Once again, however, students outside the density-driven service areas of Dover, Sandpoint, Ponderay and Kootenai would be out of luck.

“We’re trying to increase bandwidth throughout our service area, and the schools are going to be a big part of that,” Dye said. “But I don’t think this technology could be used to replace the face-to-face experience of teachers and students in a classroom.”

The prospect of providing a laptop for every ninth-grader also gave Cvitanich pause. With a new batch of freshman arriving in high school every year, a laptop fund would be a permanent fixture on the school budget.

“I’m done some basic homework on the issue, and I know that Maine found some frustration down that avenue,” Cvitanich said. “They ran into costs that increased year by year and refresh issues in keeping technology up-to-date.”

And the expenses wouldn’t end with the laptop purchases, Cvitanich said. Computer maintenance would also strain school budgets.

“We have limited technology staff at our schools,” Cvitanich said. “The laptops add repair issues and other costs that don’t go away.”

But for Cvitanich, the fundamental problem in implementing the plan is the decrease in one-on-one time between a student and teacher.

“I don’t think increasing class size is an answer in reforming education,” Cvitanich said. “Studies have shown that nothing is more important than keeping teachers in the classroom.”