Portable flash drives the size of a pack of gum provided for every Cape Elizabeth High School student could be the next option now that the Town Council has refused to allow the schools to spend $58,500 to continue a one-to-one laptop initiative at the high school.

Clarification The Page 4 article “Board considers flash drives” in the April 28 issue of the Current should have indicated that the Cape Elizabeth School Board’s request for permission from the Town Council to spend $58,500 was a request in addition to the School Board’s regular annual budget request of $17,502,204, which the council approved. The council did refuse the board’s request for the additional funding, which had been designated by the board to pay for 10th-grade laptop computers.

“Plan B,” as it is known, was formulated by high school Principal Jeff Shedd and district Technology Coordinator Gary Lanoie.

The cost for Plan B is lower – $19,000 – but is still not included in the budget adopted by the School Board earlier this month.

The School Board would need to reexamine the budget and find additional funding for the additional items. The board also said they would sit down with the Cape Elizabeth Education Foundation to discuss further options surrounding the technology initiative at the high school.

“Ideally, we’d like to have one-to-one (computers), but that’s not going to be a reality,” Shedd said.

The flash drives, also known as flash cards, are the size of a pack of gum and cost about $20 apiece. They would make it possible for students to store and transport data between school and home. This would solve the problem of portability that Shedd said is the biggest loss if the one-to-one laptop program does not continue.

Plan B would pool and then redistribute those laptops already owned by the school, including those currently assigned to individual ninth graders. Portable computer labs on carts with about 20 laptops each would be allocated to every department except the foreign language department, which use laptops the least.

The carts would be enough, Lyman said, to provide each student in an individual class with a laptop to use one for a class period. There are very few classes at the high school with more than 20 students, Lyman said.

The flash cards could be purchased straight out of the budget or could be partially or fully paid for by parents. Because of their small size some members of the School Board were worried that students would lose them frequently.

“I assume they’ll be going through the laundry a lot,” said School Board member Elaine Moloney, who has two children in the high school.

School Board member Kathy Ray proposed that instead of the schools spending approximately $11,000 to buy 550 flash drives, not including all those that might need to be replaced throughout the school year, it would be optional for the families to purchase the $20 flash drives for their students. As long as the purchase is not a requirement that could be an option, Lyman said.

“We’ve been forcing parents to pay for $100 calculators for as long as I can remember,” said School Board Chairman Kevin Sweeney, who agreed with Ray. Asking the parents to pay for the flash cards would also hopefully prevent many from being lost, he said.

Some School Board members were disappointed with how far the group had strayed from the original intent of the laptop initiative.

“We’ve gone from one-to-one to optional flash cards, that’s a big jump,” said board member Rebecca Millett.

The other possibility for finding funds was brought up by Moloney, who said the Cape Elizabeth Education Foundation would be willing to sit down and discuss further options. Continuing the laptop initiative into ninth grade was made possible by a CEEF grant of $27,000 last year.

CEEF President Dave Weatherbie said possibilities had not been discussed yet, but he could not see CEEF abandoning something they had committed to.

“Our organization has supported technology in the past and would expect to do so in the future,” he said.

He said CEEF did not, as a group, commit to things beyond the current budget, but made sure that those things they did fund had a long-term impact.

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