Prince William Schools leaders propose $10 million plan to buy students digital devices

Prince William County Public Schools says it needs $10 million to put a digital device in the hands of every high school student in the county.

The School Board says it will cover half of the cost and is asking Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chair At-large Ann Wheeler to lobby her Board to provide $5 million in matching funds.

Last week, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam ordered schools closed for the remainder of the academic year due to the spread fo the coronavirus. Schools had already been shuttered since March 13.

While some teachers have held video chats with their students, the statewide school closure has largely meant that the county’s 92,000 school children will be without a state-provided education until at least late August when school is scheduled to resume.

Even then, officials said, coronavirus could still be a concern.

“I worry about the second wave of coronavirus in the fall,” said Prince William County School Board Chairman At-large Dr. Babur Lateef in his letter to Wheeler. “If we sustain another closure and we do not have the ability to deliver online learning, our students will be at an even greater disadvantage.”

While the School Board hasn’t met since March 18, which lasted about five minutes, the elected members of the Board took a unanimous straw poll on March 27 and agreed to ask the county government for the matching funds.

The request comes as the School Board is reviewing its proposed $1.8 billion budget for the fiscal year 2021, which starts July 1. Officials had planned to begin funding the purchase of computers for students in the coming year’s budget but did not have plans to purchase the devices on this scale.

“We had previously planned to provide digital devices to all of our students over the next four years. In our current budget, you will see this as a digital equity line item. However, in our current emergent crisis, we are facing enormous challenges in delivering instruction,” Lateef states in his letter. 

In an exclusive interview with Lateef on March 23 following the governor’s school closure announcement, Lateef said he supports putting cell phones — not laptops — in the hand of students.

“We already dictate into phones, so why wouldn’t we be able to dictate a paper into a phone and then edit it,” said Lateef.

Phones, both iPhone and Android work on separate operating systems than laptops and come with inherently stronger built-in computer virus protections.

Last week, school officials in neighboring Loudoun County began passing out more than 11,000 laptops for students for student use.