As White Station High School students in Memphis returned to class last month, they noticed something was missing.¶
Many of the laptops they had relied on for years for schoolwork were gone, and they were asked to use pencil and paper instead. This followed a policy change by Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) to cut technology maintenance costs by ending its one-to-one laptop policy, where each student has one assigned at the start of each school year.¶
Student Device Rollback
According to an article published by Chalkbeat, White Station Principal Carrye Holland told parents the school would move away from the policy because of a lack of supply.¶
MSCS Director of Strategic Communications Terrica Thornton said the district currently has more than 300,000 devices but is dealing with increasing equipment maintenance and repair costs. She also said parental concerns across the country about student technology use in the classroom, along with a new state law reducing unnecessary digital screen time for public elementary school students, played a role in the decision.¶
MSCS Superintendent Dr. Roderick Richmond said during the school board’s meeting on Aug. 25 that the model, in place since 2020, was tied temporarily to COVID-19 and Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding that is no longer available, making it financially unsustainable.¶
“We're going to have to look at how we do one-to-one devices, and if one-to-one devices are sustainable, and I would say, as the superintendent, one-to-one devices are not sustainable in the way they were initially conceptualized many administrations ago,” Richmond said.¶
He also cited high rates of equipment damage and loss with student devices and said the district will work with principals, teachers, and parents on how to handle device usage moving forward. He also linked device issues to IT staffing and capacity.¶
“What has to happen every year is, if you think about a district like ours with over 80,000 computers doing one-to-one, those computers have to be reimaged,” Richmond said. “They have to be redistributed, (new) passwords (and) logins. All of those things have to happen.”¶
MSCS students will retain access to online tests and digital classwork in the meantime as the district workshops how to use its digital resources more intentionally. It is unclear what other schools have been affected or will be affected by the change, and the district has announced that it will hire a new IT department chief.¶
