Last week, Rogers Public Schools held a ribbon-cutting for their new technology center off Easy Street. The new facility is a central location in the city and will make storing technology and deploying aid to students and teachers throughout the district easier.
Randall Lusk is a system administrator at Rogers Public Schools. He says you would have to see where they came from to understand how critical this new building will be for day-to-day operations.
“Just to have the open room and the space and the storage that we can actually utilize, because previously we had stuff spread out across like three or four different buildings just because we didn’t have the space. We were in a little building. And so the building that we were in, we housed 13 or 14 people in cubes in this one little room. Well, it’s not a little room—I mean, it’s a building—but we were shoulder to shoulder, right? And then anytime we had any kind of shipments or anything come in, we had to try to really get creative in how we store things.”
Lusk says the tech team had to store a lot of technology in unlikely places like gyms and commercial storage units.
“And then during the summer, we had to utilize the REAP Building that’s right next to the old technology building just to bring in new Chromebooks and get those set up because we just didn’t have the room to do it. So we were spread out throughout the entire district. But coming here, we have a nice, beautiful big warehouse. We have big open space where you can work and actually do your job, and a loading dock, which is unbelievable. Everything was unloaded by hand. And we had a rolling cart, and we just all worked together. And here it just makes it so much easier.”
Lusk also says the location itself is convenient when it comes to traveling to provide assistance to teachers.
“Of course, we’re on the northern side of town, but it’s easy access to everywhere we need to go. You’re just a hop, skip, and a jump from Dixieland. And if you get to Dixieland, there’s three different schools on Dixieland alone. But everywhere that we have that we need to go, it’s easy access to be able to get to and from. And if you notice, over on Poplar Street and all that, they’ve been doing all that construction work on the roads for forever now it seems like, and just having to work around them to try to get to a school that you need to go to, you had to go out of your way just to be able to go. So if a classroom is down, they’re not able to teach a class. So we have to be able to get over there pretty quick.”
These days, technology is critical in the classroom, according to Jeff Perry, superintendent of Rogers Public Schools.
“When I first started in this business, it was kind of nice to have technology, and it enhanced a couple of things and it helped. And now everything that we do is surrounded by technology. All of our student and demographic information is on there. Our telephone systems are connected with that. Our primary sources of communication and an essential part of all of our student safety protocols are connected around technology. And so being able to create a facility that enhances what we’re able to do in technology, to streamline the process so they can take a piece of equipment out of a box and get it on a teacher’s desk or a student desk—that is critical in everything that we do. And so this facility actually helps to expedite that entire process and get it from a box to a desk being used by someone.”
Keln Taylor, the director of technology for Rogers Public Schools, says the center is a building worthy of their technology team.
“They’re amazing. And we’ve got a building ready for them. We operate a help desk line where teachers call over. We have people on the phone. They call in and get help. At times they will come and pick them up, but typically we go out and deliver items to all our districts, all our buildings.”
There will also be on-site technology training for faculty members and internship opportunities for students.
Santiago Esparza is a senior at Rogers High School and a Chromebook technician for the technology team.
“Currently I was working on some computers earlier before everybody started coming in, and now I’m just helping with logistics and all that, I guess. So it started out as just like a slight internship during the summer, and they eventually decided to keep us. So now we’re just in charge of repairing Chromebooks and making sure they get to where they belong and all that stuff.”
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