Using the funds from the May 2023 bond, the Fort Bend Equipped 1:1 Policy was introduced to the school this year, which will give students equal access to laptops and online education tools.
“I do like the uniformity of it,” Faith Orsargos, an English AP teacher, said. “So, for instance, if I use OneDrive assignments in Schoology, now everybody’s using the same kind of laptop. They’re going to probably use the same kind of browser.”
Orsargos also said that she liked the new policy because she now has more freedom to assign online homework.
“Now it’s a little bit more equitable, so we would have more freedom to do that.” Orsargos said.
However, some students see this new policy to be something without many changes to their academics and instead more of an inconvenience. Sophomore Cordi Leung said that “it’s just different.”
“I don’t really get anything out of it more than I would have from my normal laptop,” Leung said.
Another sophomore, Vincent Dang, said that the laptops slowed down his learning and wasted time teachers could have used teaching.
“You would have multiple groups get them and some not, which messed up teachers’ lessons,” Dang said. “Like making teachers spend an entire class period just passing out laptops.”
Romulo Crespo was the assistant principal in charge of distributing laptops.
“We did have laptop carts throughout the last few years, but each cart only had a certain amount of laptops and we didn’t really have enough for every student all the time,” Crespo said. “A lot of times teachers are running around trying to pull carts from other teachers so they can have a whole set of laptops for their students if they were working on something that needed laptops.”
Crespo said that teachers are now going to be enforcing the phone ban because of the laptops now available.
“A lot of the research also shows that overuse of cell phones takes away from the learning opportunities in the classroom,” Crespo said.
Crespo calls this period of distributing the new laptops a “honeymoon phase.”
“Kids will get accustomed to using the laptops.” Crespo said. “They’ll personalize them, they’ll make it their own, they’ll learn about the capabilities of these laptops that are going to make them successful in class.”
