Students and families across the state have struggled to implement some form of at-home or remote learning, but state officials say they are doing what they can to ease the burden. However, it’s not going to happen overnight.
The Learn from Home Task Force, formed by Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona, has been meeting to see how they can distribute 60,000 laptops to some of the neediest high schools and get 185,000 take home sets of learning materials from Scholastic to pre-K to grade 8 students.
The laptops, which came from a donation from the Partnership for Connecticut, which is a nonprofit formed between the state and Ray and Barbara Dalio’s Foundation, will likely arrive the first week of May. The donation of at-home learning materials from Scholastic came from Indra and Raj Nooyi and will likely be distributed in the next two or three weeks.
Guilford Schools Superintendent Paul Freeman and East Hartford Schools Superintendent Nate Quesnel, who are heading the task force, said the logistics of distributing the laptops and materials would be a challenge under regular circumstances. They’re more challenging under these circumstances.
“We see these coming in waves,” Quesnel said of the laptops. “60,000 laptops will not be coming to Connecticut before May 1.”
Once the laptops arrive they will have to work with families to connect these devices to the Internet through the hotspots being offered by Internet Service Providers.
“Getting devices into the hands of students is the first hurdle,” Freeman said.
He said they will work to make sure they are connected to the Internet too.
The 33 Alliance Districts will have to apply for the donations and those applications are due on Friday.