REPUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT #309

The Republic School District will cultivate a safe, challenging environment for achieving maximum potential and student success.

30306 East Hwy. 20 * Republic, WA 99166 * (509) 775-3173 * Fax 775-3712

The Impact That Facilities Have on Learning

A buildings structural facilities profoundly influence learning. Inadequate lighting, noise, low air quality, and
deficient heating in the classroom are significantly related to worse student achievement (Alexander & Lewis,
2014). As the Tech Director of Republic School District, I was recently reading an article titled Designing
Classrooms to Maximize Student Achievement. I came to the sudden realization that this article was talking
about our school!

This past summer, we were fortunate to be awarded 150 Chromebooks--a value of $48,000--through a Summit
Learning grant. We are so excited to be able to offer this opportunity to our students. Having access to
additional and more advanced technology allows us to better meet the needs of all of our learners and improve
communication between teachers and students. After reading this article, I took a close look at the
infrastructure of our school and how we have been able to integrate this new technology into our existing
infrastructure.

Receiving these Chromebooks has caused a few issues, however, such as the need to establish locations to
charge the devices, store them, maintain them, and effectively utilize them. When our school was built, the
architects did not have to think or plan for things like wattage for 1:1 student devices. They did not have to
engineer the ability to modify the number of electrical outlets that any given classroom would have access to.
They did not have to consider electrical load or the feasibility of our students to have such constant access to
technology. As such, we are currently working to make these Chromebooks accessible to our students by
running conduit on the outside of walls and pulling electrical outlets away from classrooms that did not have
many to begin with. This has been causing issues for our staff. As our need for consuming more space,
wattage, and bandwidth increases, there will need to be more creative ways to meet this demand if we are to
keep up. We are so fortunate to have been awarded these Chromebooks, and Im hopeful that we will be able to
utilize them in our classrooms to better improve our culture of student learning and student success.

Josh Zakar
Tech Director