County Shows Support For $200K Tech Boost For Schools

SNOW HILL — The Maintenance of Effort (MoE) calculation for Worcester County Public Schools (WCPS) in Fiscal Year 2015 was reviewed and approved by the Worcester County Commissioners this week.

MoE will see a roughly $70,000 increase from FY14, though the Board of Education has reported that only funding at MoE levels would be detrimental to the school system. The board is also requesting for FY 15 $200,000 in non-recurring funding, a request that only received conceptual approval from the commission.

Though total enrollment for WCPS is down slightly from last year, there is a mild increase in the number of students that are used in the state MoE formula. The formula does not count pre-kindergarten, part-time or non-residential students in the calculation. The total number of WCPS students for FY15 is 6,649 with the number that qualifies for the formula 6,249. Using the per-student appropriation level from FY14 of $11,783, MoE funding will increase to $73,636,640 from $73,565,938.

“As outlined in the attachment, Maintenance of Effort funding would require an increase of $70,702 in county funding for FY2014,” wrote Dr. Jerry Wilson, Superintendent of Schools. “As we have discussed, funding at this level would not allow the school system to maintain current programs, provide employee salary increases or increase resources for technology.”

The commissioners will have to decide if they wish to fund over MoE when they compile their budget this spring. But the school board is also requesting $200,000 in non-recurring technology funding to purchase computers for students. As a non-recurring expenditure, the $200,000 would not raise the MoE calculation for next year. The computers are necessary to help schools cut down on the number of students that have to use each computer, especially during assessments associated with standardized testing, according to Wilson.

“What we want to do is have a low pupil-to-computer ratio when it comes to the testing window itself so that we reduce the amount of time for all students to complete the testing during that two-week period of time,” he said.

The computers will have other uses beyond testing, Wilson continued, and are part of WCPS’s push to keep classrooms technologically viable. Last year the Board of Education received a similar non-recurring grant and purchased about 225 laptops for students along with all of the support equipment necessary. However, with more than 6,600 students in the school system and the need to replace aged computers, Wilson explained that it can be difficult to control that pupil-to-computer ratio, especially at larger population schools like Berlin Intermediate School and Stephen Decatur High School.

Because the main use of the computers would be for online testing, Commissioner Merrill Lockfaw was curious if the need for the technology would remain as high if anything changed with Common Core requirements or if the county ever somehow opted out. Wilson reiterated that the computers are needed for more than just online testing but even if there was any kind of unlikely change with Common Core WCPS would still be required by the state to do some type of student assessments.

The commissioners voted to approve at least MoE level funding for next year, which is a state requirement, with the option for more when the actual county budget is developed this spring. They also gave conceptual approval for the $200,000 non-recurring technology funding which means that the commission could choose to remove it from their final budget, especially if the state denies the WCPS to designate the funding as non-recurring.

Following the conclusion of the commission’s meeting, county resident Fran Gebhart delivered comments to the group questioning the cost per computer that Wilson estimated, which was about $800, as well as his fears that there could be hidden costs with licensing fees that would become an ongoing expense. Likewise, he warned that the costs of assessments for students could be on the rise and the county should pay close attention to how the newly implemented Common Core standards play out. The commissioners said Gebhart were duly noted.