Technology Acquisition

 

Our state general revenue budget is only able to support our hardware replacement schedule as a capital expenditure. Instructional technology acquisition almost always depends on grants, federal funds or some sort technology community partner.  For our students technology levels the playing field.  Their ears are their eyes, and our classroom instruction depends on visual access through both sign language and instructional materials. 

 

We currently have approximately 100 classrooms at Texas School for the Deaf.  The classrooms numbers for each department look something like this:

 

Early Childhood Education (ECE)/ Elementary (ELEM) = 19 classrooms including PE and Drama

 

Special Needs Department = 20 classrooms in various buildings not already counted

 

Middle School (MS) = 15 classrooms including 2 classroom used by SND teachers

 

High School (HS) = 24 classrooms including 3 rooms used by SND teachers

 

Career Technology Education (CTE) = 14 classrooms

 

Technology Acquisitions (Projects) Needed:

 

1)    Apple 1:1 High School Laptop Project – This project would allow us to acquire 50 new laptops each year in order to stay functional and up to date.  We would like to be able to update ¼ of our inventory used in this project each year as part of our equipment upgrades.  The cost of upgrading ¼ of this inventory annually is about $50,000.

 

2)    Classroom Electronic White Board Project – We currently have 14 classrooms at TSD with Electronic Whiteboards/LCD Projectors/Laptops in use.  It has been our goal to increase this number each year by adding 10 classrooms to this list.  The cost for this project is $5000.00 PER room which equals $50,000.00 per year.

 

3)    Document Cameras/LCD Projectors – We currently have 8 document cameras (ELMOS) with LCD Projectors on in various classrooms on campus.  We need to add 5 document cameras and 5 projectors each year in order to expand this program to other classrooms.  The cost of this project PER classroom is $4,000.  In order to add 5 classrooms per year we would need an additional $20,000. PER year to support this project.

 

4)    Laptop Initiative in the Middle School Grades (6-8) – It is our desire to expand our current ‘High School Laptop 1:1 Initiative’ to include the Middle School grades.  This project would cost about $30,000 per year to start in Middle School.