Dexter students sport rubber bracelets as part of technology upgrades

And we need a school millage to pay for things like this? Here's another idea that would allow students to login to computers at school: give them a user name and password. That works for 99% of people when logging in to computers. I'm pretty sure that's what I did when I was a student in high school about a decade ago. But maybe for today's kids that's just too old fashioned since they need to be trained for "jobs that don't exist" (notice I left out the 'yet' from the original quote since who knows what jobs will exist in the future). If the Dexter school board voted to approve the request for a millage based on financial needs like this, then I think that's a sign that our schools really aren't cutting costs to the extent that say they are.

"We’re training kids for jobs that don’t exist yet..."

...with money that hasn't been approved yet...

I agree, computers are a dying fad. There is certain to be a trend back towards pen and paper or tin can and string for communication. Jobs now are using technology less and less. We could solve all the schools financial problems if we sold all those computers and eliminated all technology from schools....But seriously, I think the $7 bracelet was a small part of that Bond spending, if you read the whole article you would notice they also upgraded the old PC's to Macs.

ChesterMan, I certainly understand the importance of technology in current and future jobs. I work at a company whose product is essentially technological innovation. My point wasn't that we need to stop upgrading technology. It was that there are productive ways of spending technology dollars and non-productive ways. Either the school district spent money on these bracelets when it should have gone to other places, or they have plenty of money to waste. Don't come to me asking for more money when you're already wasting what you have. Maybe the school district was afraid that the students would forget their logins, so they needed these bracelets? Except high school kids today can remember about 50 logins for their email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. It just seems pretty stupid to say that the options were to either give the students these bracelets or have them use generic guest logins with too many user rights.

Agreed, Bryant123. Chesterman, a Ford and a Cadillac will both take you where you want to go, but a Cadillac will cost $40,000 more. There's no reason to spend money on ridiculous technology purchases and then congratulate yourself for having done so. My fifth grade daughter needed a jump drive for school this year and guess what? I paid for one. Now granted, it doesn't log her in to the computers at her school (which are both PC and Mac, btw) and she has to keep track of it on her own, but she also knows that she has to keep track of her own login ID, password and drive. And she also knows that if she loses her drive, she's replacing it out of her own savings.

The difference between these two situations is that the school my daughter attends elected to teach the students to be responsible for their own accounts and materials, and Dexter chose to absolve its students of those responsibilities. Now what's so dumb about that?

If you still don't see a problem with the purchase, try this:

Q; A certain local school district with a median household income of more than $50,000, a median family income of more than $62,000 and fewer than 3% of its families living below the poverty line according to the 2000 census has a grade 5-12 enrollment of approximately 2,400 students. If the school district buys one jump drive for each student at a cost of $7 per drive, how many thousands of taxpayer dollars did the school district waste on the purchase of the drives? With an additional K-4 enrollment of approximately 1,250 students, how much more will the district waste in the next five years for more drives?

A: $16,800; $8,750.

This "Jump Drive With Mitten Clips" program will cost the taxpayers more than $25,000. Since when are the public schools responsible for buying school supplies for every child who attends?

THIS IS PRECISELY WHY THE TAXPAYERS ARE ANGRY, DEXTER COMMUNITY SCHOOLS. ARE YOU LISTENING?

@Ypsi-Maybe this will clear things up a little. The tech bond was passed months ago, so the voters have already approved it. Also, the drives came out of the buildings budget, separate from the bond. If there is no room in the budget next year, then they will probably look for another solution.

Moran said that if it works it'll be great; if it doesn't, it doesn't.

Ann,
Maybe this will clear things up a bit for you. I didn't assume that these purchases were made in anticipation of the enhancement millage. The school district paid for the drives using bond money, which is LONG TERM DEBT. The taxpayers in Dexter will be paying for those "$7" jump drives for YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS. Long after the last jump drive has given up the ghost, Dexter taxpayers will still be paying for them. Has anybody at Dexter Community Schools bothered to calculate how much those $7 drives will end up costing Dexter taxpayers when the interest on the bond is factored in?

You use bond money to build buildings and buy durable equipment. You don't use bond money to by throw-away $7 junk drives (not a typo)! That's like to refinancing your house to cover the cost of eating out.

And the sad fact is that the principal justifies the purchase by saying that "it will teach kids to log in." Well, not exactly. For starters, kids already know how to log in. It's not a tough concept. Since they have a bunch of schools handy at the school district, they could TEACH that concept to the ONE KID in their system who doesn't know how to log in. These kids log into MySpace and Facebook, and Twitter every day of the week without needing any assistance at all from moms and dads or jump drives with rubber bands on them.

Second, the principal says "we wanted to figure out how they store information..." The unsaid portion of the sentence is "... so we wasted $17,000 of long-term debt to find out."

Waste, fraud and abuse.

As Ann said, it there's money in the budget next year then they'll do it again. So, they'll continue wasting money as long as we'll give it to them. Also, if they have a budget shortfall next year, then they can look back to this year and say "maybe we should have saved those thousands of dollars last year to handle possible future shortfalls". The schools don't need to spend every dollar they have available. In the same way, if the federal government has a budget surplus, they should either refund the money to taxpayers or save it to handle future costs, not just add new spending. At every level of government, they spend all the money in the boom years and then have to raise taxes in the bad years to pay for all the excessive spending to which they've become accustomed.

"Using money from a school bond, the Dexter school district recently upgraded its technology, including replacing old PCs with Macs. And giving students a small rubber bracelet was part of those upgrades."

Ann,
Your original story indicates that the cost of the drives was paid for by money generated from a technology bond. Now you say the funds came from the "building budget," so which is it? And there are three different buildings involved: Creekside, Mill Creek and Dexter High School, so that means three different building budgets were involved.

Again, why, oh why has the taxpayer been shackled with the responsibility of paying for consumable school supplies for public school students when 97% of the households with children in Dexter live comfortably above the poverty line?

If you don't like it then do something about it. No, I mean really do something about it. You could always move away to another city as well. Cheese with that whine?

I am a resident of Dexter, with one child in the Dexter school district, and another to begin in the Dexter school district next year.
Amy, your story and then later comment do appear to be misleading.

"Using money from a school bond, the Dexter school district recently upgraded its technology, including replacing old PCs with Macs. And giving students a small rubber bracelet was part of those upgrades."
"Also, the drives came out of the buildings budget, separate from the bond."
So which is it? Honestly, I believe a revised article or a second article is warranted to clear this up, not just further comment below the aritcle. Secondly, you need to be sure to get the story right the first time in the future. I speak for many of my Dexter neighbors when I say, get it right or don't report it.

I am speculating here, but I seem to remember that the thumb drives were also put in place to track what the kids are doing on the computers in case there is a violation of rules at the school etc., along with limiting access to certain areas of the internet while allowing access to non-students to those same restricted areas.

Again, as a resident and taxpayer in Dexter, I commend the school district for its forward thinking and its ability to provide training for jobs that are yet to be created. I do however agree that maybe parents who's children are asked to get these thumb drives be asked to pay the $7 rather than take it out of the building budgets, but I like the thinking behind these drives.

The real problem with the taxes in this state are not with the decision for my school district to purchase thumb drives for its students, but comes from the gross over spending in lansing, and the fact that the largest employer in our state, IS our state. We have 637,000 public employees and only 500,000 manufacturing employees left in our state. Since 2007, for every family that moves to our state, two families leave our state. And again our number of public employees continues to grow, (from, The State of Joblessness, Wall Street Journal, 10/20/2009). Governor Granholm as admitted to holding the schools and our children ransom in order to get tax increases state wide to fund her bloated budget. In my humble opinion, this is down right CRIMINAL what Jennifer Granholm is doing, and her proposed tax increases will for sure cost you more the the $200 extra in taxes you will pay for a $200,000 house in Washtenaw County.

My point is simply this, don't tell my school district how to spend its money, and I won't tell yours how to spend its money. I am voting for the millage as a stop gap for the time being, and I will do all that I can to go against what Lansing is trying to do.

In conclusion, don't forget that Granholm said in 2007 "I'm never going to raise taxes again." (from the same WSJ Story along with many other articles) That lasted all of 18 months where she is now trying to raise taxes...yet again. Let's open our eyes to the real problem.

@MiBroker- In the article that I submitted, I made it clear the bracelets came from a separate budget. The paragraph you quote has been heavily edited.
Moran told me the bracelets came from the buildings budget, and that's what I put in my article.
Something may have gotten lost in the interest of conciseness.
I appreciate you pointing this out.

The student USB flash drives allow two things for students.
1 - It gives them a secure connection to the school network. It is "key" to access their files. No USB Drive no access. It is designed so no one else can get to their files even if the password is known. Security is a serious issue everywhere so it does make sense to teach it early.

2- A student can download their files to work on at home, even if they do not have an internet connection. Then when back at school the edited "home files" can be uploaded to their network space.
Technology innovation will march on with or without us. What some see as wasteful spending others see it as an investment in better learning.

Schools, like Dexter, that innovate and give students the tools, especially technology, to better learn and excel will provide our leaders for tomorrow (for jobs that do and do not exist today). The only constant in education is change and I hope they never stop innovating.

AAReader,
How is a device that relieves the student of needing to be concerned about security teaching him or her anything? "Oh, don't bother with that. This thing will do it for you..."

Sorry, but I don't buy the Kool-Aid about teaching for jobs that don't exist yet. If the jobs don't exist yet, how can DCS possibly have a clue as to what skills they'll entail?

Did the Dexter school system have a real, documented problem with network security and/or students burglarizing other students' files, or is this a case of solving a problem that didn't really exist? And if the issue IS security (it's not), the principal wouldn't be taking a "wait-and-see" approach to requiring students to turn in their flash drives when they leave. (After all, why would a truly secure network permit former users to have access?)

Again - waste.

YpsiLivin- There was a security problem. I think we all "wait and see" when new ideas are implemented. That's part of any transition- see what works, what doesn't, and continue accordingly. No initial plan is perfect.
I think Dexter is making great strides with technology use and I see students benefitting from those changes. The support of community members is appreciated. Thanks, mibroker!

From the article and other posts these jump drives do more than simply store files. They provide more security and a means of limiting internet access to approved sites. I assume (but don't know) they also encrypt files. I could see employers adopting something similar to protect their networks. By limiting access, it helps protect against viruses, bots and other infections and there may be some cost offsets by having to spend less time and money on buying and updating frequently different packages of defensive software. I don't know that the district should need to wait for a security problem to manifest itself before adopting a control. After all, I don't wait until there's a manitest crime problem in the area to install locks on my doors and lights on my house.

Again, I don't know. But, I wouldn't be surprised that the initial package of jump drive bracelets was included in the price of the technology upgrade for the systems as a package offering from the contractor and probably at a bid price that is lower than the $7 replacement costs quoted. I don't know this, but a lot of times the costs of these items can be covered by federal or other grants (e.g. technology educational grants). It would be interesting to know if Dexter has or will apply for any such funding to offset some of these costs.

In any case, in the few years I've been in Dexter, I've found this is one of the few school districts that tends to manage its funds fairly well and with good results. They have one of the better systems around in terms of student performance, graduation rates, and collegiate matriculation I believe. And, they seem to meet their budgets even as revenues have decreased.

I came from Wayne County and am highly jaded when it comes to wasteful school spending. They know how to waste money there. I've been pleasantly surprised by Dexter. They really have spent the bond money from the millage renewal on good upgrades with lot repavings, re-roofings, security doors and access systems to prevent unauthorized entry into the buildings and many other direct expenditures including the tech upgrade. There aren't any of the controversies experienced in other districts (e.g. Saline, Willor Run, etc). It also enjoys a very strong community support largely because it has served its citizenry so very well.

In closing, I appreciate the tenor and concern of writers such as YpsiLivin, we need people to monitor for wastefulness and to keep a fire under Lansing and local government. In this instance, though, I don't think these little devices warrant as much outrage as has been put forth. The money was spent directly on something the students will use and benefit from, isn't a great sum, and isn't necessarily a large recurring expense (as compared to redundant administrative costs for example). Even if this initiative doesn't pan out in the long run, a school district needs to try new things--big or small--if it is to strive for ongoing excellence.