GREENCASTLE COMMUNITY SCHOOL CORPORATION GCSC WINTER NEWSLETTER

January 2017

From the Desk of Superintendent Jeff Hubble Happy New Year! We hope that you had a wonderful winter break and great holiday celebrations with your families. The second semester is off and running smoothly. It sure is nice to have the students back! I would like to thank those that have called, emailed, sent a card, or talked with me at local businesses to congratulate me on my new position as Superintendent. After working side-by-side with Mrs. Puckett for the last three years, I knew that it was a giant role. I appreciate the trust that the school board has placed in me and will work hard to make them, and the families of GCSC, proud of our school corporation for years to come. In this edition of the GCSC newsletter, I would like to explain what will be happening with the 1100 secondary iPad Air devices. Three years ago, we kicked off the 1:1 initiative after the committee had worked for the two years prior preparing for the move. GCSC decided to abandon the adoption of textbooks and invest in instant information at the fingertips of each learner. We had been investing $4.5 million in the textbook adoption cycle of six years. We are now four years down the road and have phased out charging parents for everything but science and math books. The science textbooks will phase out at the end of this year and math will phase out next year. The teachers of GCSC have worked incredibly hard curating lessons, activities, and curriculum materials for students using Canvas, Google Classroom, and many other apps and resources. There never has been an intention to abandon print materials, so we have been adding to our libraries, book rooms, and classrooms. We also wanted instant updates in the learning device; now when the name of an African country changes, for instance, it is reflected on maps within a day on the iPad. The first three year lease of the secondary iPads will be up at the end of this year. The eleven hundred iPads will be collected from students and will be recycled. The State of Indiana has officially made electronic devices “textbooks”. The cycle has changed from six years to four years, but the rules are still the same. We have been paying a $124,000+ lease payment for those iPads for the last three years. We have been recouping 25% of the cost of the iPad from parents through textbook rental, which is the mandated amount by the State of Indiana. We have given parents a first year discount on the 1:1 roll out the device since some books were still in the cycle. Continued on next page-Hubble Inside this issue: Mr. Jeffrey Hubble Superintendent

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Mrs. Jennifer Finnerty School Safety Specialist

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Mr. Russell Hesler GHS Principal

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Mr. Scott Weltz GMS Principal

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Mr. Jon Strube Tzouanakis Intermediate

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Mrs. Emily Johnson Ridpath Principal

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Mr. Michael McHugh Deer Meadow Principal

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