State lawmakers and education leaders on Tuesday grappled with how best to fund the growing technology needs of public schools in an era of belt-tightening and education budget cuts.
"Do we want to be 21st Century or do we want to be something less than 21st Century?" asked Buster Evans, Forsyth County Schools superintendent and State Education Finance Study Commission member.
Evans serves on a subcommittee of the study commission looking specifically at state funding for textbooks and technology in the classrooms. Its recommendations, as well as those from the full commission, could potentially lead to an overhaul of the state's current and decades-old school funding formula, known as the Quality Basic Education Act.
Some preliminary recommendations are expected later this fall.
Researchers told members of the subcommittee Tuesday that some school districts are easing into the age of technology, while others appear to be fully embracing it and committing millions in local tax dollars to the latest innovations.
Bob Swiggum, chief information officer for the Georgia Department of Education, said 97 percent of the state's 109,000 classrooms have Internet access. But optimistically, he said only about 10 percent of those classes have bandwidth to actually do interactive teaching on-line, which many see as the future.
The state currently spends $12 million to provide high-speed Internet access to local school systems, with 3 megabytes per second in bandwidth, Swiggum said. "That's not adequate for streaming or downloading massive files," he said.
Other research presented to the subcommittee showed that school systems are spending more money than they receive from the state on textbooks and technology. The QBE formula calls for districts to receive $27 per student for textbooks annually, which has equated to a collective $45 million since 2005 for all districts.
Research shows that since 2005 local districts have spent a combined $114.7 million on textbooks and $126.3 million on technology. Among their combined investments: 626,000 computers, 52,000 Smart boards, electronic and interactive chalk boards.
In Forsyth, officials have paid extra to upgrade from 3 megabytes to a far more powerful 1.2-gigabyte computer system, believing that one of the strongest tools in education and economic development is technology.
Senate Education and Youth Committee Chair Fran Millar, R-Atlanta, said lawmakers also realize "how important technology is to really improving learning."
Millar said the state needs to have a better understanding of how school districts are using technology.
"We've got to get a handle on it or we're cheating the kids," he said.
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