SPANISH FORT, Ala. — Spanish Fort parents, educators and administrators were among the first to hear plans for an ambitious technological overhaul intended to revolutionize curriculum delivery countywide.

“We don’t need a reformation, we need a renovation,” Baldwin County Public Schools Superintendent Alan T. Lee told a crowd of about 50 Monday night in the Spanish Fort High School library.

The informational meeting was the first of seven Lee has planned across the county to promote what he’s calling a “Digital Renaissance,” a program intended to place laptops in the hands of all fourth- through 12th-graders. The measure would be “empowering them with 21st-century learning opportunities,” he said.

Specifically, Lee has launched a campaign to “replicate to the nth degree” what’s been done in Mooresville, N.C.

There, in only three years, a project-based learning system that incorporates real-world applications has been adopted and “paid big dividends.”

Since the program was started, Lee said Mooresville dropout rates have plummeted, graduation rates have skyrocketed and state-level percentile achievement scores have improved from the high 60s into the 90s, making the school system the fourth-highest achieving school in North Carolina. Indirect benefits include a drastic reduction in behavioral problems and improved attendance rates.

On a recent visit, system staff were taught an algebra lesson by two fifth-grade students, talked with a high-school student who was recording a French assignment onto his computer for his teacher to critique and learned the help desk is manned by students earning credit for their skills.

“I think we can do what they’re doing in Mooresville with less money,” Lee said, noting the North Carolina program costs roughly $200 per student per year. It’s not the computer that’s made these accomplishments possible, though. It’s the curriculum-delivery method that encourages engagement and participation, he said.

Although no timeline or “implementation matrix” exists yet for the proposal, Lee said he anticipates it will take $4 million to incrementally install the infrastructure needed to support the renaissance, and bond funding has already been secured to launch a pilot program at Baldwin County High School in the fall.

Although $4 million might seem like a considerable investment, Lee told those gathered Monday that it actually represents about 1.5 percent of the school system’s annual operating budget, and the finance director is already exploring ways to “reposition expenditures” to find as much of that figure as possible within the existing funding structure.

“It really isn’t a big piece of the pie,” Lee said, noting it could be as simple as asking questions such as what would the impact be if 3 percent of the system’s discretionary funds were redirected, or even 12 percent.

“One mil would just about (generate) what we need for a year, but I’m not asking for a tax increase,” Lee said, adding that grant funding will most likely play a key role in the program’s success.

Getting started

Lee began his presentation by asking participants to remember what life was like 20 years ago as the first Gulf War raged and something called the Internet was “unlimited and open to everybody for the first time” with 1 million users.

The bigger question, however, is how different things will be 20 years from now as technology continues to dominate an increasingly global existence.

“Think about what skills your children will need, what understanding of the world will they have to take with them? Now, imagine the classroom needed to prepare kids for that,” he said.

The existing model, he said, typically involves a teacher standing in front of the classroom with students filling in worksheets and writing out assignments, with relatively “little interchange”

And because of that, “a lot of kids are basically able to separate themselves from the education process,” Lee said.

The Digital Renaissance, however, is designed to re-engage those students and encourage analytical problem solving as well as group-based learning to improve performance and retention. The new model, he said would encourage students to:

• Learn to work in partnership with one another.
• Innovate.
• Create.
• Develop ideas and be able to communicate those ideas. (“We need thoughtful people who can come to conclusions on their own.
• Be media literate.
• Be analytical and able to find their own answers.

The Mooresville model, Lee said, provides all of that, and he firmly believes the $2 million initiative announced recently for Baldwin County High School presents the perfect jumping-off point.

Funded via $2 million in Qualified Zone Academy Bonds, Lee said $1.5 million will be used to purchase laptop for BCHS’s 1,300 students, and he will hold onto the remaining $500,000 until he’s certain all of the Bay Minette high school’s needs have been met. Any funds remaining will be applied toward the $4 million needed for systemwide infrastructure implementation and upgrades.

In addition, Lee said only 75 percent of the funds must be repaid, and the school system has 17 years to do it. The only caveat is that the system must use facility improvement funds to do so, meaning there’s a built-in guarantee no funds will be diverted from staffing, curriculum or other areas of the operating budget.

The investment equates to about $238 per student per year for a five-year period, he said.

BCHS was selected to host the pilot program because it has the second-highest poverty rate of all high schools in the county system, the lowest Alabama achievement scores in the county, the lowest number of scholarship dollars awarded, the highest dropout rate and the highest rate of behavior referrals.

“I’m holding in my hand a potential change agent,” Lee said.