As one of our major projects of the year, our Club has donated 12 laptops to a school to help students there with remote learning. The nearly $5,000 project was funded in part by a District grant, while the club component of $2,500 was donated by Club member Mohammed Saleh. The pandemic has closed down schools in our region and many have moved to online classes. While this has helped some students continue their education, many students from low-income families have been left out because they do not have access to computers and internet connections required for remote education. Therefore there is a great need to provide these young learners with the resources necessary for them to keep up with their more fortunate fellow students. Therefore the Club decided to undertake this project to help address at least a part of the need.
The 12 Chromebooks are for students at Longwood School District but will remain the property of the School District. Each student assigned one of these devices will use it for the School year and return it to the School at the end of the academic year. At the beginning of the next year, another batch of students meeting the criteria will be assigned these devices. The Longwood School District was identified as the Project target District because it is a diverse District of 9,200 students with 52% in the free lunch program, and many sub-continent-origin students. These Chromebooks will be given to students in K-4 grades whose parents' annual household income is less than $30,000. These Chromebooks were selected by the Scholl District to match the existing inventory of remote learning devices and have 5-year full replacement coverage. So in the 5-year lifecycle, they will have benefitted 60 students. The Project was completed within about three months.Dr. Sam Ahmed Director of Special Programs and Data Reporting of the School District coordinated the project on behalf of the School District. Dr. Ahmed made a presentation at a meeting of the Club in February. He said 350 students still do not have any remote learning capability because they do not have any computers.