Leechburg Area students to receive iPads, Chromebooks this fall

Starting this fall, the Leechburg Area School District will provide iPads and Chromebooks to all its students as part of its One-to-One initiative.

The district serves 750 students from Leechburg, West Leechburg, and Gilpin.

Students in grades K-2 will get iPads. Students in grades 3-12 will be given Chromebooks.

Students will be able to take the devices home with them.

Superintendent Tiffany Nix said the district was able to buy the devices with the roughly $173,000 it received from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund, which is intended to support covid-19 response efforts. Those efforts include buying educational technology.

District officials planned to wait another year before rolling out the initiative, but decided to move ahead with it because of the ESSER funding.

“When the grant came out and we were allowed to buy technology through it, we took advantage of it,” Nix said. “Clearly with covid-19 and students needing to be instructed at home, this was a definite push for it.”

The school board approved the $38,220 purchase of iPads and the $45,000 purchase of Chromebooks at its re-convened May meeting.

With them, students will be able to do schoolwork at home. In addition, teachers will be able to incorporate more online technology into their lessons because everyone will have the same access to the same tools.

“The iPads and Chromebooks will allow us to expand our educational resources and opportunities on a daily basis to our students,” school board President Neill Brady said.

The district also plans to establish internet connections for students who don’t have internet access at home. Those services also will be paid for with ESSER money, too, Nix said.

“There are students who have and there are students who do not have. We wanted to make sure that they all had some sort of device to be able to access online educational tools, so they’re not limited and just doing schoolwork during the school day,” Nix said. “There’s a whole world at their fingertips now, and we’re happy to provide that for them.”