PCHS Students Get New Laptops, Are Asked to Give Back to their Community
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Each student at Pinckneyville Community High School this fall will receive an Apple laptop computer to use in class. The official roll-out days are Aug. 2 and 3.
Parents and students must sign a liability waiver assuming responsibility for the laptop in their possession. The laptops are numbered and will be assigned to the student for their tenure at the school. The retail value of a student laptop is $1,200. If a computer is damaged, the student and his/her parent or guardian are responsible for the $100 deductible to repair it.
In order to take the laptop home, students must either pay a $75 technology fee or complete an additional 10 service hours. Students do not have to take the computer home. It is up to the student and their parent/guardian.
Beginning in the fall, every student must complete five service hours per year as a graduation requirement. That means freshman will have completed 20 hours by the time they graduate, sophomores 15 hours, juniors 10 hours and seniors five hours.
The additional service hours to bring the laptop home would bring the total to 15 hours per year. Services hours completed between July 1 of this year and June 30, 2012 count toward the 2011-2012 school year.
Superintendent Jon Green said he sent an e-mail to students and parents letting them know about an opportunity for service hours July 8 - 10 at the 'Dirt Diamonds' fund-raiser sponsored by the PCHS Education Foundation. Anyone interested may contact Green at jgreen@pchspanthers.com.
"We're trying to teach students to give back to their community,"?Green said. "A lot of them do it all the time anyway. If they already do, the service hours aren't anything extra. If they don't do any community service, we're asking them to start."
The computers are part of a major effort to raise academic standards at PCHS. In addition to the laptops and service hours, the PCHS Board of Education has changed the requirement for extracurricular participation. Students must be passing all nine classes to participate in extracurriculars. The previous standard was seven of nine classes.
The Board is also poised to increase graduation requirements to four years of English, Math, Social Studies and Science. Green said he expects the board to approve the change in January 2012. The class of 2016 would be the first to have to meet the new graduation requirements.
Principal Keith Hagene said that the district will be implementing curriculum changes as the same time the new requirements take effect. Each year's classes will build upon the previous year's.
Information on the new technology rules is available on the high school's website at www.pchspanthers.com.