Peekskill Technology Equity Coalition

Chappy Manzer of Manzer's Landscape Design & Development, Inc, Jason Chiaramonte of Nardone's Funeral Home and Luis Segarra and Rohan Defreitas of The Crescent Companies are once again teaming up to help the community by raising funds to purchase Chromebooks and 1,200 WiFi hotspots for the students of the City of Peekskill School District. There is a great disparity between the more well off school districts and the inner city school districts such as Peekskill. We recently had a conversation about this with a teacher at the City of Peekskill School District. Help us raise our goal of $50,000 to purchase Chromebooks and WiFi hotspots so students can learn from home. Having 1:1 in an ordinary school year would allow for increased access when in school. This would allow teachers to integrate technology more efficiently throughout the day. However, before the closure of school buildings, due to Covid, Chromebooks were shared either in carts or a few Chromebooks per class. Since the closure of the schools, the school district has loaned over 500 Chromebooks to students grades 2-12 to enable to enable students to participate in distance learning. Many of the families either had a device that had to be shared with multiple members of the household or had shared internet access.⁸ Some families that are in need of a device did not borrow a Chromebook because they do not have access to WiFi. The school district was able to have a few secondary students complete a survey about internet access before the buildings closed and found that out of 90% of students who stated that they had internet access 75% had that access through a cell phone. Cell phones are not conducive to completing all of their classwork. Although they may be able to see their assignments on the cell phone, it is not easy to complete and submit assignments. Please help us reach our goal of raising $50,000 to help the students of the City of Peekskill School District.