Morris Plains Schools Get $200K Worth of Technology

The adopted a $210,000 purchase of new technology in the district for the 2012-13 school year at Tuesday night's board meeting.

"The district is moving along very, very quickly at a rapid rate in the field of technology," District Superintendent Dr. Ernest Palestis said. "I want to thank the board for their support, and I want to thank the teachers for their input really in a short period of time."

The new additions coming in the fall include new Smart boards each classroom, a sound system for each classroom, teacher Web pages, a new student information system database and iPads for the new preschool at Mountain Way.

Last month, Borough and Mountain Way School principals to find out which technology already in place was most useful. They found that smart boards—interactive boards that take the place of more traditional whiteboards or chalkboards—have been the most successful.

The district currently has 12 of these boards, but 34 more will be added in the fall to each classroom. The cost will include software for the installation and a laptop that runs each smart board.

The other big purchase for the fall is the teacher voice amplification system, which will also be installed in every classroom. This device is new to the district, and it uses infared signals to transmit the teacher's voice so that every student can hear the teacher well. The device comes with two microphones; one for a teacher to wear, and a handheld one for students to participate with.

"Every child in the class benefits because it amplifies the voice of the teacher so that the students can hear everything that the teacher is saying," Palestis said.

The new student information system that is being added to the school is called School Brains, which is a database that will have a number of features such as an emergency call system that will easily send out texts, emails, and phone calls to parents, a way for parents to access their students' report cards, and the contact names of every student.

School Brains is the same database that the Morris School District uses, so Palestis said that it will make communication with student records much more efficient between both districts.

The district also purchased 20 iPads for the new preschool at Mountain Way for next year.

"We did a demonstration at a board meeting, and we found it very valuable for preschoolers because they have alphabet development programs to help with sound, counting, and various math concepts," Palestis said.

In addition to these new purchases, the schools currently use a number of other technological upgrades that they have purchased in the past two years. The schools have 90 laptops, Wireless Internet in all classrooms, and firewall software to protect children when they use the Internet.

The purchase was obtained with a lease, so the board will make three payments of $70,000 for the next three years. The first payment will be due July 1, the first official day of the 2012-2013 budget.

The first $70,000 comes out of the this year's budget of $14,994,161. The budget had a tax levy increase of 1.46 percent, which remained well under the state mandated cap.

Palestis said that the advantage of the lease is that the schools will have all of the technology up and running in September, and the district will have two additional school years to pay it off.