An overview of several large-scale information technology projects that happened throughout the Fargo Public School District over the past several months.
By Fargo Public Schools Information Technology Director Bill Westrick
This past summer was a busy one for the Fargo Public Schools (FPS) Information Technology (IT) staff. Following the Long Term Technology Plan, we repurposed or recycled 900 personal learning devices, added 3,200 new devices, and updated or refreshed another 2,000 computers. All high school students continue to make use of 1:1 computers that they can use at school and take home, and now the middle schools have 1:1 computers in-school across all grade levels. We also expanded this summer into the elementary schools with chromebook deployments for fifth grade classrooms. We are fortunate to have such a great team of tech workers each summer who can accomplish so much in such a short time frame.
Over the summer the FPS IT department also implemented a new online registration program for FPS parents called School Office Pro. Parents can now fill out necessary forms and update their family contact information online and school office staff can accept and process these online submissions quickly, all without manually typing in information transcribed from stacks and stacks of paper forms. In our first year of using School Office Pro, we achieved a 95% completion rate for our student’s information, which is a tribute to the incredible effort each school put into helping families through their first year of online forms. Special recognition is due to Kerby Engen and Del Vogle in the IT department, who put in countless hours planning, implementing, and monitoring this new system.
In addition to online forms, parents were also given the opportunity to pay school fees and add lunch money to student accounts online with a new program called SchoolPay. By the start of the school year, more than 20,000 transactions had already been made using the new system, making SchoolPay a rousing success. Joy Retterath from FPS Business Services deserves special notice for driving the SchoolPay project from planning to implementation.
During this fall, 450 staff laptops are being replaced, with teachers getting an opportunity to sit in on device transfer sessions to learn about their new computer and ensure it has everything they need for their classrooms. The bulk of these replacements have already been accomplished, and things are going well.
As we look ahead to next spring and summer, FPS is looking at the best options for student device replacements. The tech plan assumes replacing two grade levels each year as devices go through a three year cycle in the hands of students. By spring, device options will be identified and volunteer students will try out new devices in the classroom to evaluate their effectiveness. During the summer of 2016 we will be expanding chromebooks into the fourth grade level as we continue to enhance elementary technology at one grade level each year. We are also applying for a state technology grant that we hope to leverage to move up the third grade chromebook implementation by a year so that we can implement that device deployment over the 2016 summer as well.