The $629,000 grant will assist the district buy pill computer systems for its 1,560 college students in kindergarten by way of twelfth grade, a transition that’s anticipated to happen in time for the beginning of the 2023-2024 faculty yr.

When the difficulty returned to Monday’s assembly, with an official quote and a decision to authorize buy of the Apple iPads, the School Board provided unanimous approval.

During her March 13 look earlier than the board, Ridgeway defined that she has labored with a gaggle of academics all through the district to check numerous expertise to search out the perfect substitute for the Apple Macbook Air laptops and iPads at the moment utilized by college students.

She first launched the present spherical of expertise transition planning to the board in February 2022. The district started its one-to-one expertise gadget program in 2014. Since then, every scholar in sixth by way of twelfth grade has acquired a laptop computer for varsity use, whereas pre-kindergarten to fifth grade had been offered tablets. The district refreshed its gadgets in 2018, staying with Apple laptop computer and pill computer systems, although switching from 13-inch to 11-inch laptops as a cost-saving measure.

Ridgeway advised the board final yr that it “would be a good time to think about it and research options.” She returned in April to let the board know concerning the ECF grant software.

During the final a number of months of the 2021-2022 faculty yr, “test drives” of Macbook, Chromebook and iPad gadgets had been carried out with 10 of every gadget given to college students and academics. Their experiences, together with different discussions guided the eventual determination to go along with iPads for your complete scholar inhabitants.

Notification on Feb. 1 that the district was chosen to obtain the Emergency Connectivity Funds grant makes that call much more thrilling, Ridgeway mentioned.

“That is really exciting,” Board Chairman Alex Carlson mentioned, joking that it was a “different category” of thrilling than the marching band’s cruise plans that got here up earlier within the assembly.

A committee settled on the tenth era iPad, which has a ten.9-inch display screen and is Apple’s newest iteration of its base degree pill. Cost of the pill, which might be paired with a keyboard folio and Apple pencil, is $414 for academic organizations ($449 retail).

With 1,560 scholar gadgets wanted, the value tag will probably be $645,840 for the iPads, with the ECF grant protecting $400 per pill. Additional prices will embrace iPad instances and keyboard, carts to hold the tablets, and coaching. Anything above the $400-per-unit lined by ECF will probably be borne by the district.

The faculty district will obtain trade-in worth for the laptops and iPads college students at the moment use, Ridgeway mentioned, however she didn’t have an thought of what the per-unit value could be.

Board member Greg Mathews questioned Ridgeway a few malware assault that not too long ago hit the Minneapolis Public School District.

The assault went public when the district despatched a letter to folks informing them of a system breach by which hackers stole district information. On Friday, Minneapolis Public Schools despatched one other letter to folks saying hackers had posted among the stolen information on the darkish net, the place customers are untraceable.

With information of the Minneapolis district “being held hostage,” Mathews mentioned, “our constituents are probably concerned about the same thing happening here.”

Ridgeway mentioned safety threats are a relentless concern, and there was a current flurry of hacking assaults made on faculty districts all through the county.

“It’s happening, and obviously, you know, it’s getting more and more complicated,” she mentioned. “It’s not as simple as the hacking used to be.

“… One thing we can do is keep our hardware up to date,” Ridgeway added. “Most of our (system) backbone, we purchased way back in 2013, 2014, and we’re working on getting those pieces replaced.”

The districts servers have been changed, however there’s extra work to do in that space, she mentioned. But {hardware} is simply a part of the difficulty. Software vulnerabilities are one other layer of safety concern, and the district is attempting to handle that by way of training of workers, Ridgeway mentioned, with a part of the training sending take a look at phishing emails to workers.

The district’s web supplier additionally supplies some safety oversight, as does the district’s personal firewall system.

“I’m in there daily,” Ridgeway mentioned, checking the experiences on server exercise. “I can literally see, you know, 11 times today, someone from China has tried to get in; 12 times today, someone from Russia, or someone from San Diego, or someone from … I can see that. And I do my best to prevent it or stop that particular event. But it’s a never-ending thing. It’s something you try not to lose sleep about, but it’s always there.”