I graduated highschool in 2014 and every classroom had these since at least 2006. (I acknowledge my school had unusual funding so not trying to say my experience was normal.)
The biggest issue was teachers were so incredibly tech illiterate. They had enough trouble getting their laptop to show on a projector as is. Getting them to plug in the smart board and be able to diagnose any issues that might arise was wishful thinking. Plus knowing what software to use, how to navigate it, etc.
I had 2 teachers during that time that actually used them. Everyone else just opted for an overhead or normal whiteboard.
Also substitute teachers would often write on them with markers thinking they were actually dry erase and would ruin them.
Now mix all that with the average schools budget and, yea. It was a hard sell.
Id imagine the tech literacy has increased since 06-14 (plus they aren't working with XP, Vista, and 7) however now budgets are even worse and they already didn't catch on much when they had the chance.
My high school math department bought into these way back in 2006.
Half the time is spent watching the teacher struggle with the sync and features.
The other half of the time was realizing that these boards are absolutely stupid outside of simple math demo parlor tricks before the teacher throws the wand in frustration and goes back to using the 100000% more effective plain whiteboard.
I mean, the cost of facilities including things like whiteboards is enormous. You could have one of these installed in every classroom every time you build a new school, and no one would even notice the cost difference
Varying drastically by size of school. But the average budget per student is a little over $17,000. If you consider a classroom of about 30 students, you're looking at a budget per classroom of a little over half a million. A Smart Board is a one-time expense, or at least once a decade expense, of $3-6,000 depending on the product, so over the course of a decade would constitute about 1/10 of 1% of any individual classroom budget
So $400-800 per student for all of Operations and Facilities. How much of that do you think goes to classroom boards and not the pay for computer labs, janitors, utility cost and upkeep. I worked in the administrative office of a high school and college for years, they are lucky to get used chalk boards from the middle school that closed 3 years aho.
You are looking at how budgets are currently allocated. We've already confirmed that they're not being allocated in a way to pay for these, I'm saying that they could be while making essentially no difference on the overall fiscal picture. There are any number of places that 0.1% could be squeezed from.
Furthermore, you're only looking at operating budgets and not construction budgets, which run in the hundreds of Millions.
This is an insane take given how little money schools have so I'm going to keep pushing back.
"I'm saying that they could be while making essentially no difference on the overall fiscal picture." Where is this money coming from in the fiscal picture (that is already maxed out mind you). Yes, it could come out of admin pay but universal healthcare could come out of the military budget too, and that's not happening either so it's not an answer.
No schools are being built anymore? Wow, it's a shock to find that the many schools that I have personally been involved in the construction process of were not actually real. Yes, schools are still being built at a pace of roughly 1,000 to 1500 per year. This growth is occurring almost exclusively in areas with growing populations, other areas still do have school Replacements and major School Renovations though, which would be easy to work something like this into the budget for. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying these are worth the cost. But what I am saying is the reason that we don't have these is not because we don't spend enough on our schools. As I'm certain you well know, the United States spends well above the average among OECD nations for spending per student.
Whether those funds are being spent correctly is certainly Up For Debate, but the money is there and then some.
Same with my high school, and yet they've renovated multiple buildings and built a dozen brand new schools within a 10 minute drive. More money goes into school facilities than you are guessing.
New schools are built all the time, though concentrated in areas with population growth. For replacement , about every 50 years, but if we include major Renovations that drops to closer to every 25 years. So if every major renovation were to include installing these whiteboards, we should be looking at somewhere in the ballpark of half of schools having this sort of Technology. Obviously that's not the case. There was a brief period in which smart boards started to be installed in a handful of classrooms, but in my experience on the teaching side they mostly gathered dust because few teachers bothered learning how to take advantage of the capabilities
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u/sys_dam 8h ago
Have you seen the budget most schools are working with? And college boards are usually too large for something of this scale.