West Lauderdale Middle School PTO raises money for Chromebooks

Since October, PTO organizers at West Lauderdale Middle School have been raising funds by hosting a ticket raffle to raise funds so students will have more Chromebooks in the classroom.

“Fundraising is very important because there is a lack of state funding that comes into education, so we have to fundraiser to upgrade technology and things of that nature and do more for our students and put more in our classrooms.”

Glenn Boothe who serves as West Lauderdale Middle School's principal says the shortage in Cromebooks has been an ongoing problem and hopes this year it will be resolved.

“Last year we were able to buy 5 chrome books from what PTO did for us and this year we were hoping to do that again because that would go a long way to getting a computer in everyone’s hands here at our school.”

Chromebooks are expensive, and this is why the school is relying heavily on money raised from the fund raiser.

“We have in the neighborhood of 645 students, we have 40 classrooms so that would be 40 chrome carts if we had one in every classroom.”

Due to new technology-based curriculums; the Chromebook will be a necessary tool for students.

“So much of the curriculum these days is on a computer or Chromebook, laptop kind of source, we have our ready programs; their state tests every year on these devices, and they don’t have enough devices for the students to be able to take test in less than a two week period.”