The incoming freshmen of the Class of 2019 will now receive their own personal laptops for the school year. The school is deciding whether they want to give students iPads or actual laptops. They are also considering an option of a combination of both.

“I’m pretty excited for the program, I think it’s going to be very beneficial for all of our work community to get these computers, and I’m very very thankful,” Principal Vincent Randazzo said.   

Randazzo hopes to bridge the technology gap between students since every single freshmen will be equal in having technology.

This will help out low income students and their families who may not have enough money to afford a portable device take work and assignments home and access reliable wireless internet.

“Kids will be able to do more work when they’re better able to access [the technology],” Randazzo said. “Right now there is an extensive number of kids that don’t have technology capabilities.”

Some people believe that giving more access to technology to students will better their educational experience.

“We can do that effectively as educators, to use the technology and our teaching abilities to expand the horizons and challenge you a little bit more, increase their success rate a little bit better,” Randazzo said.

Online textbooks can also be used more often which will save the cost of teachers having to provide hard copies to students. This makes for less money lost if a student loses one and the Class of 2019 will have 24/7 access time. This saves space in classrooms and backpacks all around.

The main reason why students will be getting personal devices is becae the program is state sponsored. Students will not have to pay a fee for the devices and they will be responsible for the care of the device.

“It’s about a year in the making, last year we had some state representatives talking about what kind of fundraising we can do for capital approval around school,” Randazzo said.

The state representative had to get in touch with people who would have to see if AHS was qualified for the grant, and they were.

The planning involved in arranging the grant has been going on for around a year. However, the effort was worth it since this is something that will further the students’ educational learning because they can be connected with teachers and learn.

“It took from this time last year, to this time this year to get it all done,” Randazzo said. “And he made the announcement during back to school night in the auditorium, that we would get the computers this year.”

The administration hopes that the introduction of technology into the daily class schedule will be a beneficial way of allowing students to become more connected with one another and the world.

“Just the fact that all of our kids will have technology and can use it to get an education is going to be great to experience,” Randazzo said.