From Harford County Public Schools:
Harford County Public Schools (HCPS) was recently awarded a five-year, $1.5 million grant from the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) Partnership Grant Program for a Digital Conversion Initiative in five Aberdeen schools. The initiative will increase access to technology and the opportunity for improved learning in the HCPS schools serving the most military-connected students in Harford County.
“As curriculum transitions to an online platform, there is a pressing need for increasing the ratio of devices to students in our schools,” said Superintendent of Schools Barbara P. Canavan. “We are grateful to be chosen for this grant opportunity and believe it will significantly increase students’ academic success in reading, English, and language arts through access to muchneeded technology.”
The public schools in closest proximity to Aberdeen Proving Ground – the premier research and development army base in the county – currently have limited access to technology. This grant will provide the funding needed for a digital conversion in the reading and English/language arts classrooms of Aberdeen High, Aberdeen Middle, Roye-Williams Elementary, Meadowvale Elementary, and Churchville Elementary schools.
The Digital Conversion Initiative will include securing the equipment and devices necessary to offer a blended learning model, as well as providing professional development for teachers on the use of the new technology, web tools, computer programs and learning management systems.
Blended learning combines traditional classroom learning with online learning, in which students can, in part, control the time, pace, and place of their learning while teachers determine the combination that’s right for them and their students.
“As the Office of Reading, English, and Language Arts continues to move forward with their digital conversion, the technology and professional development afforded through the DoDEA grant provides a unique opportunity to support college and career readiness for students in the aforementioned schools,” said Susan Brown, Ed.D., executive director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment for HCPS.
The goal of the initiative is to improve student academic achievement and ensure college and career readiness for K-12 military/federal-affiliated students in HCPS.
This is the fifth grant HCPS has received from the DoDEA Partnership Grant Program.
Some of these grant $ should go to the Harford Tech cybersecurity program. That’s where we can get the most out of this investment.
I couldn’t agree more. That program has been struggling for years. It is very outdated and has so much potential. They have gone through at least 4 teachers running that program in 3 years.
I’m surprised Harford Tech still exists to be honest.
I know they have some good teachers, but to hire people who will need to become teachers, and to know/teach a certain level of their trade skill at the pay scale they want to start them? Who would sign up to that? Definitely not me. It’s not worth it in any aspects.
Who are they hiring and what quality trade people are they getting to replace veteran employees who retire?
You have a serious problem at hand if what you said is true about the retention rate of just 1 trade in the school.
It’s accurate In Fact I think they are now on their 5th teacher in 3 years in the cyber security program. It’s a joke
Cyber security teacher job opening vacancy states:
“Starting salary for Bachelor’s degree with SPC ($41,583)”
Pretty much explains why.
I am sure that you genuinely feel that the cybersecurity thing is great and necessary. However, part of the problem with our economy and jobs is that there is absolutely NO manufacturing in this country anymore. When nothing is produced and we keep buying from overseas markets, we lose. I say give those grants to those who will teach to manufacture and repair. Everyone wants to sit in front of a computer in an air conditioned room nowadays. Everyone wants to complain about the flow of latino immigrants into this country, yet no one will do the jobs they will do. The government will eventually restrict the internet and cybersecurity will be remembered as a fad. Just like all the web page designers, the cybersecurity industry will crumble once its use is quenched. We need to make products. End of the story……
Your comment about manufactruring reminded me of something I read a few days ago:
“Declining manufacturing employment over the past 30 years has given a lot of people the impression that America’s manufacturing sector is in decline. But that’s actually wrong, as this chart shows. Since 1987, US manufacturers have increased their output by 80 percent at the same time as they have reduced their workforce by about 17 percent. In other words, American factories are about twice as efficient today as they were three decades ago. So we’re producing more and more stuff, even as we use fewer and fewer people to do it.”
Source to follow.
Found it on RealClearMarkets; check the first graph on the site below.
http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/10/10/12933426/27-charts-changing-economy
According to NAM (National Association of Manufacturers), manufacturers contributed 2.17 trillion dollars to the economy in 2015, while employing 12.3 million people (9% of the workforce).
That sector has certainly declined since 2000, but to say “there is absolutely NO manufacturing in this country anymore” is certainly not accurate or based on factual data.
Actually that should be consolidated with Homeland Security at Joppatowne!
The big problem is that no one wants to learn and work a trade skill anymore. It’s all about starting your career in debt with college loans, sitting in front of a computer typing letters and numbers for the next 20 years.
Take a look on HCPS’s employment website, Welding and Cyber Security vacancies.
I don’t even know why people with the experience even bother to get hired only to leave for something else.
I feel sorry for the kids at Tech. It seems very hard to find anyone who knows their trade to stick around for $42,000/year especially with all the public school teacher requirements they will eventually have.
‘Aint it great how the Feds take tax money from ALL of us and then try their best to spend it on their own? And all the while this Canavan fool grins and laps it up without ever mentioning the unfairness… and this is the fifth grant? Those schools must be light years ahead of the others by now in technology and test scores. Oh, wait, those are FEDERAL dollars… isn’t there some requirement that 80 cents of every dollar has to be wasted?