Nine Mississippi School Districts are awaiting the arrival of devices. Among them are Okolona, Nettleton and Picayune School Districts. Angela Hendrix is with Nettleton, which has 1,200 students. She says they ordered more than 800.
“We applied for a grant for the computers. So, we would pay for them first and then we’ll apply for reimbursement from MDE,” said Hendrix.
John Kramen is with the Mississippi Department of Education. He says schools pay for the devices then MDE reimburses the districts through monies received from the state’s $1.2 billion in CARE Act relief funds.
“We created a program through two vendors for the districts to be able to contact them and place the orders through their system. We’re tracking them several times a day to make sure all these devices are moving from China to processing centers around the country to a central place here in Jackson,” said Kramen.
Kramen says when the students receive the devices they are loaded with software, filters and ways for districts to manage them remotely.
Okolona School Superintendent Chad Spence is expecting 287 Chromebooks.
“To me it gives me hope and a sense of reassurance that we have done everything possible with devices, because right now with COVID 19, not every child is coming to school,” said Spence.
John Kramen with the Mississippi Department of Education says the bulk of the 320,000 devices ordered have been delivered. He says another 6,500 are expected by November 6. He added some school districts have ordered 70,000 devices independently of MDE.
