New Caney ISD has upgraded its technological footprint over the past three years, putting more laptops and devices into the hands of its students and teachers.

For teachers, the district leased 2,600 laptops and tablets for $378,691 per year, and the devices were first distributed before the 2016-17 school year, Director of Technology Dustin Hardin said. NCISD also signed a three-year lease last year worth $1 million per year for about 18,000 Dell Chromebooks for all students in grades three through 12 in 2014, he said.

The devices help students gain the digital skills necessary to compete in a global economy and provide more accountability, Porter High School Principal Kenneth Hodgkinson said.

Students can access much of their instruction materials and do many of their assignments on the laptops, which are filtered by the district, he said.

“The kids have no excuse for not doing their assignments anymore or forgetting their assignments or forgetting it at home because it’s all on the cloud,” Hodgkinson said. “You can’t say, ‘My dog ate my Chromebook.’”

Nearly 6,000 NCISD students between grades six and 12 take the laptops home with them every day during the school year, Hardin said. Students in grades three through five have access to Chromebooks during the school day that are stored in towers each evening, he said.

NCISD is experimenting with expanding the program to lower grades. Kings Manor Elementary will provide its kindergarten classes with a Chromebook, Hardin said.

“When I started five years ago, the technology was in such poor condition—no one used email because the email system wasn’t reliable,” Hardin said. “We moved in three years from not using technology at all to not being about to live without it.”