CVS donates $150K to city schools for computer buys

WOONSOC.ET - In the pursuit of distance learning, the Woonsocket Education Department has incurred expenses of about $500,000 since late March for the acquisition of Chromebook computers, but thanks to CVS Health, it’s getting $150,000 of it back.

“It’s fantastic,” said School Committee Chairman Paul Bourget after Supt. Patrick McGee issued a loud “thank you” to CVS Health during the panel’s regular meeting.

With time running out on the school year, Bourget said the WED purchased 750 Chromebooks after CVS Health agreed to cover the expenses as a donation.

Students in the post-secondary grades were the first in WED to be supplied with Chromebooks, but CVS Health’s donation will cover students in elementary grades that still didn’t have

them up until a few days ago - mostly in Grades K-4. All but a few of the devices were distributed to student families after May 7 from the Villa Nova Middle School. WED personnel continue delivering them to families who have been unable to pick them up.

The school took on the atmosphere of a manufacturing facility as the information technologies and custodial staff got the last batch of Chromebooks ready, said Bourget. The Chromebooks had to be unpackaged, programmed and repackaged before they were distributed because they don’t come pre-loaded with all of the necessary teaching software.

"The were piles and crates of Chromebooks and they were working systematically to get that done,” said Bourget. "It was like a factory down there.”

Basically a laptop computer, the Chromebook has become the leading vehicle for distance learning, at least in Woonsocket’s public schools. Among other things, they employ "Google Classroom” software that lets teachers interface with students in oneon-one or group formats.

Addressing members of the school committee this week, McGee said teachers at the elementary levels have received special training in using Google Classroom and other software tools on the Chromebooks.

"If you think back to when we first started distance learning, many of our secondary staff were utilizing Google Classroom,” McGee said. "Not a lot of our elementary staff were necessarily utilizing the Google Classroom platform.”

But the superintendent added, "I’m really happy to be able to say we’ve been able to provide that opportunity for professional development to the staff that might have been lagging a little farther behind some of the other staff in the district. We’ve really done a nice Mob of preparing our teachers and continue to train them as we navigate through the end of the school year.”

It was Gov. Gina Raimondo who initially asked the state’s corporate community to step up to the challenge of distance learning. She issued an open call for donations shortly after she switched K-12 public schools to distance learning on March 23 .

A number of city officials, including Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, got behind an effort to bring CVS Health in as a local partner to help out the city’s public schools.

"Upon learning in 0arch that the students in Woonsocket would be moving to distance learning, I reached out to Supt. McGee and to the Rhode Island Department of Education to work to secure Chromebooks for our students,” Baldelli-Hunt said. "The call was answered with the very generous donation of $150,000 by CVS Health in collaboration with the Rhode Island Foundation and RIDE.”

"I want to thank my community partners in enabling us to place hundreds of Chromebooks in the hands of children,” she added.

Lisa Bisaccia, executive vice president and chief of human resources at CVS Health, said the company hopes the new technology will make life easier for families facing all the new challenges associated with distance learning.

"Recent stay-at-home orders and school closures have put many families in an extremely difficult position,” Bisaccia said. "We hope that providing access to technology helps ease the burden on local families in our hometown of Woonsocket who are struggling to Muggle the demands of work, school and childcare, while maintaining their own health and well-being.”

Bourget calls distance learning "a work in progress,” but he says students and educators continue to get better at it the longer virtual classrooms are the order of the day.

And it won’t end for public schools in the city on the last day of the regular academic year. Bourget said the school committee has approved a plan to extend distance learning to the district’s summer school.

Still in play is the question of whether distance learning will carry over to the school year that begins in 6eptember. The Mury is out, but Bourget sees some troubling signs on the horizon, including a few post-secondary schools that are already locked into plans that shelve traditional classroom learning in the fall.

The good news, says Bourget, is that if public schools in Rhode Island must continue offering lessons remotely, he’s confident the WED will be Tuite good at it by then.

"We have no idea where we are going to be by the end of the summer, but we as a district will be well equipped to do distance learning,” said Bourgeois. "No question about it.”