Technology related Strategic Plan items removed from the 2012/2013 Board of Education budget

The following is a list of Technology related items from the system’s Strategic Plan that were removed from the Board of Education budget request for the 2012 / 2013 fiscal year:

High	Update computers in library	$  60,000.00
Middle	Update computers in library	$  60,000.00
Elementary	Update computers in library	$  25,000.00
Elementary	Update Teacher Laptops	$125,000.00
System	Update Network Servers	$  35,000.00
System	Upgrade Business Office Computers	$  12,000.00
System	Replace IT Van	$  30,000.00
High	Classroom Projection / Sound Devices	$  60,000.00
Middle	Classroom Projection / Sound Devices	$  60,000.00
Elementary	Classroom Projection / Sound Devices	$  30,000.00
High	Laptops for students of interventionists	$ 13,200.00
Middle	Laptops for students of interventionists	$ 46,200.00
	Grand total NOT funded	$556,400.00

Anyone that has read my blogs, any of the five I write, knows that I am very passionate about Technology.

Without it, we would not have seen all the advances we’ve seen at an exponential level over the past couple of decades.

Without educating our children about it and on it they WILL be left behind.

I am not suggesting half a million dollars is cheap; it isn’t.

When compared to the full 145 million dollar budget, it is.

When you understand that an increase of $556,400.00 spread out over all the taxpayers of Wallingford costs the average residential homeowner an additional $30.00 for this year (I’ll explain that in a second) how could we NOT afford to make the investment?

Technology does need to be upgraded and replaced but not annually. If this investment was made as I outline above and included in this year’s appropriation to the schools it would not be there next year. It is not a true one time cost as down the line it needs to be done again but it is not a reoccurring cost that happens each year either.

So I ask you again, how could we NOT afford to consider this?

So how much traffic shows demand?

Above is the tracking information from hits to my Town Council blog from Monday’s two posts and all the referring URLs as of 8PM EDT (and a few older ones).

The difference between “page views” and “unique visits” is that in theory, with page views, I can just hammer at the site on my own and drive up the traffic.

I don’t need to do this and I assure you that I am not. I can’t say that no one else is but it is not me.

Now, when you look at the referring URLs and the referring sites it helps; it shows that people are jumping off of Facebook and Networked Blogs to refer back to the posted articles.

So I am going to post the budget (courtesy of the Record Journal at this point but I am told that the town is going to do this as well.)

I am not going to hit the page after I post it but I am going to see how many people jump from my page to the PDF file.