San Antonio – A recent survey of employees at Judson ISD shows educators want more time to prepare and ensure a smooth start to the school year.
Students and staff are currently gearing up for the start of the school year on Aug. 18.
In person or virtually, students still need vaccines to go back to school
District Communications Director Steve Linscomb said glitches that worry district staff members include the delay in technology supplies needed to ensure a smooth start to online learning.
“We need to have the devices in-house to be able to accommodate our one to one initiative,” Linscomb said. “We have actually more of these devices on the way because we’re obviously not the only school district that is vying for these devices to try to get to our students so that they can do the virtual learning. And so there are some that are still on backorder.”
According to Linscomb, about 5,000 of the 20,000 Chromebooks the district ordered to facilitate online learning have still not arrived.
The district’s technology team has been busy upgrading the security system to ensure that students can log onto the system safely and that those using their personal devices have the passwords needed. Linscomb said upgrading the current internet system is also crucial to ensure that distance learning is not slowed down.
“When you get that many, especially teachers, on one campus that are trying to do virtual instruction, you’re going to need that bandwidth or you’re going to have a lot of glitches and outages and so forth, crashes and so forth,” Linscomb said.
The district, Linscomb said — like many others — is facing unchartered territory, so they anticipate some bumps on the road, but they ask for flexibility.
“We just ask for parents and staff just for their patience as we make sure that we try to make this go as smoothly as we can and have the instruction go as efficient as we can possibly make it,” Linscomb said.
The Judson ISD School Board will hold a special meeting on Thursday afternoon. The board will vote on a request to delay the fall semester start date to Aug. 24.