LEWISTON — The School Committee voted 5-2 Monday night to provide every freshman at Lewiston High School a Chromebook computer this fall.

The following year, freshmen, juniors and seniors will get Chromebooks.

The exact cost was not available; Chromebooks cost between $200 to $350 apiece.

The plan is to buy 350 in August and 1,000 more the following school year. The computers will be paid for by bonds recently approved by the City Council.

Joe Julias, technology manager for Lewiston schools, told School Committee members the Chromebook was a good choice for several reasons. It’s less expensive than the Apple laptop but it does the work of a computer compared to an iPad.

“What is a Chromebook? It’s a different breed of computer” designed to used with the Internet and Google Docs,” Superintendent Bill Webster said. “The School Department is going to Google email, making the Chromebook a good choice.”

The Chromebook is reliable, easy to use and has good storage capacity, he said. Unlike the iPad, the Chromebook has a keyboard. The Chromebook weighs less than 2 pounds and has an 11-inch screen; which means it’ll easily slip into student backpacks.

Julias said it was time to provide all high school students with their own computer.

“Putting a technology device in the hands of every student is a remarkable thing,” Julias said. “The kids love them.” The keyboard makes it easy for students to write.

“There’s nothing wrong with an iPad, but for me, the iPad is an information retrieval system, it’s not a generation device,” Julias said. The Chromebook “is more like a computer.”

Computers at the high school are limited, Julias said. Only about one-third of high school students have access to a computer at any given time, and computer lab time is insufficient.

“What we need is a device for each student. These are accessible for every student,” Julias said.

Principal Shawn Chabot said the freshman class is the most logical choice to pilot the program because of the way freshmen are taught in teams.

In the middle school, students have homeroom teachers who check on student computers, Chabot said. There are no homerooms at the high school, the closest to that are how freshmen are organized and taught in teams. The team teaching would make managing and accounting for the Chromebooks doable, Chabot said.

Before computers are given to every student at the high school, “we need that time to figure out how we’re going to implement this, deploy it, ensure it’s managed properly,” Chabot said. “I realize there are some folks on the board and parents who feel like what happened with proficiency-based learning, the (current) ninth grade class should get” computers first, Chabot said. But structurally, “how we can best deploy these would be the incoming ninth-graders. We don’t have the structure with how the high school’s set up.”

Committee member Linda Scott was bothered that not all students would get computers next year. “It feels like we’re disadvantaging the rest of the students,” Scott said.

“I agree,” Chabot said.

There is a one-year warranty on the Chromebooks but no maintenance plan. There was discussion about allowing parents to buy maintenance insurance of about $50 a year, or having all parents pay $10 a year toward maintenance.

Committee members Tom Shannon and Jim Handy said they opposed asking parents to pay anything. It’s the School Department’s role to provide students with what they need for their education, Shannon said.

One Chromebook will cover all classes, while a different textbook is needed for different classes, he said.

Computers “are not the frosting on the cake. It’s what kids need to be successful,” Shannon said.

Voting for the Chromebooks for freshmen were Shannon, Handy, Kristen Cloutier, Paul St. Pierre and Mohamed. Voting against were Scott and Matthew Roy.

Webster said another technology support specialist will be needed at the high school. That unbudgeted position will be achieved “by reallocating the technology budget.”

The Chromebooks are expected to be purchased and arrive at the high school in August, and be given to students in late September.

Lewiston considering half-day Wednesdays without early dismissal

LEWISTON — Saying teachers need more time for professional development, the School Committee is considering half-day Wednesdays districtwide, possibly beginning in 2016.

“Our teachers have not had sufficient time to do their planning,” Superintendent Bill Webster said. “To really be where we need to be, it needs to be an ongoing process, something that happens each week where teachers can reflect on what happened in classrooms and make adjustments.”

But, committee member Paul St. Pierre said, the biggest problem with half-day Wednesdays in Auburn has been with parents being able to make arrangements for students who wouldn’t be in school for a half-day every week.

The consensus was to keep students in school. Students would be engaged in something educational while teachers were in professional development, St. Pierre said.

One way to do it was not having all teachers in professional development at the same time, and to use educational technicians, but to also get help from community resources such as the YWCA, the YMCA and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southern Maine Auburn/Lewiston.

It will be in the teachers’ contract for the second year that there be professional development on Wednesday afternoons, St. Pierre said. The plan is to have a year to work out how to teach students while teachers are in professional development.

Committee member Tom Shannon said, “We need a good plan. I need to have a comfort level with that.”

In other business, committee members were told by Lewiston High School Principal Shawn Chabot that grades from this year’s freshman class will not count toward the students’ grade point average when they graduate because of changes in proficiency-based learning, which has been filled with problems since September.

Chabot said that during the first half of the year, students were given grades of one to four; but in the second half, half points were possible. When considering student rankings, that would put students taking courses in the second semester at an advantage over students taking the same course in the first semester.

That did not sit well with parents Tina Hutchinson and Diane Chamberlain. It now appears “that the whole freshman year doesn’t count,” Chamberlain said. “This is not acceptable.”

Hutchinson said too many freshmen would not be proficient by the time the year ends in eight days, and many will need remediation.

In other business, the committee also approved four nominations:

* Mary Paine as teacher evaluation professional coordinator.

* Amy Poland as coordinator of the adult learning center in adult education.

* Fifth-grade teacher Steve Maroon as the extended day supervisor at Montello Elementary.

* Amy McDaniel as special education supervisor at McMahon Elementary.