ICOE on verge of becoming #1

As usual there were few members of the public in attendance the Inyo County Office of Education Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday in Independence. And that’s a shame… really. Few government or political bodies have succeeded as well as this Board and Superintendent of Schools Dr. Terry McAteer when it comes to making profound changes that have brought both the communities of Inyo County and its schools solidly into the 21st Century.

Dr. McAteer in this, his sixth and final year as the county’s school superintendent, has enjoyed the strong, unwavering support of its elected board members. That board (Area I- Alden Nash, Area II- David Hefner, Area-III LeeAnn Rasmuson, Area IV- Mary Kemp and Area V- Chris Langley). The County  has seen improved testing scores, reduced truancy, strong support for the performing arts, and greatly increased offerings of cultural and literacy programs.

In one of its most important accomplishments, Inyo residents, says McAteer, are within a few days of becoming the #1 most technologically equipped county education district in the state of California.

McAteer informed the board that new Chromebooks will be issued to every Inyo County high school student within the next two weeks, as well as to students of the Home Street Middle School to replace the one-year old Acer laptops they have been using. Those Acer laptops will be redistributed to the school districts as backups.

The technological initiative, with strong board support, was started four years ago by McAteer as a way to provide every student in the county with their own computer or an age-appropriate device. Younger students are provided with iPods that are loaded with education programs to supplement learning in the classroom.

ICOE quickly realized that under the Digital 395 project (which installed high-speed fiber optic broadband directly to the schools and throughout many of the communities of Inyo County) that it was time to make sure that all of the county’s students (and their families) were able to make the most of the availability of the opportunity and prepare students for life and work in the 21st century.

This summer ICOE spent $150,000 to expand, rewire, and revamp all of the school campuses in preparation for the final roll-out of the Chromebooks. Fifty teachers from all over the county will have attended a three-day in-service training on how to effectively use technology in the classroom. McAteer told board members, “CUE Rock Star Camps (which provides technology training to teachers) will be coming to Mammoth next year,” and “will cut travel costs for county participation.”

The Office of Education will also be allocating $500,000 for the school districts to refurnish their classrooms with desks and other furnishings that are better equipped to handle computers, for which the traditional student desks and classroom furniture are simply not designed. The idea behind the new furnishings is for greater flexibility and mobility within the classroom setting (i.e. desks with wheels that can be easily moved about and placed together in various combination) which will allow for greater collaboration and learning between students.

”This is not a top-down process,” McAteer told the board. “The districts will make the choices on what they feel best meets their needs and my office will review the purchases and then reimburse the schools.” The new furniture will likely be installed during Winter Break so as not to avoid interrupting the schools’ operations and curriculum.

The National University Teacher Credential Program will start on Sept. 3. “There are,” says McAteer, “18 potential teachers enrolled, of which 12 are local.  That’s about the same number of teacher openings we have each year.” He explained that Inyo and Mono county educators and administrators will be providing some of the training in the course and that the weekly classes will rotate between Cerro Coso Community Colleges campuses in Bishop and Mammoth Lakes.

The cost of the credentialing program is $18,000, of which $8,000 will be reimbursed by the state through the school district that hires the teacher, with the remaining $10,000 cost borne by the teacher. The average starting salary for new teachers is around $42,000.