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By Erika Fricke 

Daily Planet Staff 

Pat Ungern has been teaching in Berkeley for 34 years, but has been using computers in the classroom for only the last two.  

And she loves it. “Oh yeah,” she said, pointing to books of pictures made with a digital camera, and series of 100 small icons the children created while learning to group numbers. 

The Berkeley Unified School District has been the happy recipient of technology largess. A new Digital High School grant funds a networked computer in every instructional space at Berkeley High, just as the five-year, 6.5 million Teacher Led Technology Challenge, a grant which funded computers in elementary and middle schools, is coming to a close. But while the funding to provide the initial computers and wiring comes free, this gift is not unencumbered. Once schools receive the technology, it’s their job to keep it in working order. 

William L Rukeyser coordinates the non-profit Woodland-based Learning in the Real World that examines the role of technology in schools. “Regardless of where the money comes from, it’s the subsequent years that can really break the back of the school district’s budget,” he said.  

The ongoing costs of repairs, replacements, upgrades, ongoing training and technology support can cost one-third of the initial investment each year, Rukeyser said. 

“Where does the district get the money for that minimum 33 percent?” he asked. “A lot of school districts didn’t figure out ahead of time that they would need that money. That means that a decision is made by default to let the equipment go obsolete, which means you have piles and piles of high priced junk, or they’re having to round up the money from other programs.” 

Even when schools generally buy the newest, state of the art technology, fast paced technological advancement can outpace purchasing. For example, said Monroe, BUSD purchased computers with two gigabyte hard drives, thinking that they couldn’t possibly need more than that, but they’ve found that with new applications, they want to purchase hard drives ten times that size. And John Muir Elementary finds itself saddled with aging iMac’s in their too-small computer lab. 

Catherine James, associate superintendent of support services, said that even if hardware isn’t outdated, it still won’t last forever. “You buy all these computers, you buy them at the same time,” she said, referring to the Digital High School grant. “What’s the life of a computer? Three to five years before something blows. Where’s the replacement? You’ve got at our high school, literally hundreds of computers, which will eventually all begin to self-destruct.” 

And when computers crash, or freeze, or erase assignments, someone must be on hand to fix the problem.  

James lauded the Teacher Led Technology Challenge grant for providing tech support at each school site, in addition to hardware. The grant runs out Sept. 30, which means the end of funded tech support.  

Paul Monroe, manager of Information Technology for BUSD, currently serves all of the Berkeley schools and administration with three technicians for the entire district. “My department is the same size now as it was three years ago,” he said. “The number of computers has increased about 300 percent district-wide, and our district-wide support hasn’t kept pace.” 

As schools see their support coming to an end, they furiously plan to find a new way to fund their tech support. Both Washington and Thousand Oaks elementary schools are applying for magnet school grants, with the hope that some of that grant money could be funneled to technology support.  

But Monroe cautioned against relying on grant money for any kind of long-term technology maintenance, because, he said, “The grant goes away and the equipment stays.” 

If a constant flow of grant money doesn’t come through to fund technology support and new hardwire, the schools will have to pay for their technology maintenance out of their own discretionary funds. Principal Rita Kimball of Washington hopes to piece together funding from various grants and pots of money around the school.  

Non-profit coordinator Rukeyser said that schools face the hard choice between seeing their technology become obsolete or diverting that money for technology away from other programs. “By and large in education you’re dealing with a zero sum game,” he said. “For everything you add to the mix you have to subtract something of equal size.”  

Principals are extremely conscious of that tension. “It’s really taking a hard look at what our priorities are,” said Kevin Wooldridge, principal at Thousand Oaks. 

As elementary and middle schools face the end of the long-term grant, and have to begin the struggle to find funding, Longfellow Arts & Technology Magnet Middle School is ahead of the game. They recognized the problem of obsolete and breaking down equipment early on, and have incorporated technology maintenance into their long range plans. Nancy Elnor is the technology coordinator at Longfellow. She spends 50 percent of her time troubleshooting computers and the rest fund-raising and managing resources.  

“Once we make the commitment to having the technology on the site, we’re committing to maintaining that tech or updating and replacing it,” she said. “Without a plan, it’s virtually impossible to do it.”