Wake County families are still waiting for computers and hotspots from school system
The Wake County school system is asking for the public to be patient as it distributes around 46,000 computers and 14,000 hotspots to students who say they need the devices to learn from home while schools are closed.
With the help of the volunteer group Activate Good, school employees began distributing devices on Monday, the first day of online classes for most students. As of Friday morning, the district had notified 15,000 families of when to pick up their devices, according to Matt Dees, a Wake County school spokesman.
“For this first week of distribution, we were conservative in the number of people we invited out of concern for the health and safety of parents, students, staff and volunteers,” Dees said in an email. “We are going to see how the distributions go today and tomorrow and then look at increasing the number of notifications we send next week.”
Wake is following social distancing requirements at the five high schools that are acting as distribution sites. Volunteers are still needed to help with distribution. Go to activategood.org/operationaccesspart2 for more information.
It’s uncertain how long it will take to distribute all the devices. School leaders have said students who still need devices will not be penalized for getting online later than their classmates.
Dees said all high school, middle school and modified-calendar students who, prior to this week, had requested only Chromebooks have been notified of their pick-up date. He said hotspots arrived this week, so they expect to begin distributing those to families, along with Chromebooks, by the middle of next week.
Families need devices to learn from home
The need for the devices has become even more important because Wake is only using online classes instead of in-person classes through at least Oct. 22 due to COVID-19 safety concerns.
Wake distributed 31,000 Chromebooks and 5,000 hotspots to families to finish out last school year. Most students were allowed to keep their devices for this school year.
Wake bought 50,000 Chromebooks in the spring to deal with the expected increased demand for devices.
Sarah Alexander, a Cary parent, is waiting to find out when she can pick up computers and a hotspot for her two children. They’re currently trying to take their online classes on their iPads.
“You need that larger full keyboard and bigger screen to do multiple things in class,” Alexander said in an interview Friday.
Alexander works from home so the Internet connection can lag when all three are online.
It’s not just low-income families who need devices. Alexander said her family is middle class and could have bought computers. But with all the economic uncertainty due to the coronavirus pandemic, she said they’re trying to save money.
The school board agreed this week to buy 85,000 more Chromebooks for students. Wake still plans to give out devices for families who requested them for this school year. But the district also hopes to issue a device to all 162,000 students by the start of next school year.
This story was originally published August 21, 2020 at 3:30 PM.
