SILVERDALE — At Central Kitsap School District, 6,100 students have access to a Chromebook laptop computer. The machines have been readily embraced by the students and by teachers as well.

School district teachers told CKSD board members April 27 that the computers improved student engagement, made teachers’ lives easier and had such a positive impact in reaching students that educators wouldn’t want to teach without them.

The Chromebooks are used with software including Google Apps For Education/Google Classroom, which is a paperless system to create, distribute and grade student assignments. Teachers say children are highly engaged with the technology and enjoy typing more than writing.

“Technology is going so fast … it’s amazing to see how quickly this has been embraced in the district,” said CKSD Board President Bruce Richards.

The computers are paid for via a combination of CKSD funds and Department of Defense Education Activity grants.

Prior to using the 1-to-1 Chromebooks, the district had a PC-based computer system that had hardware and software that was difficult to keep current. Since then, the district has installed wireless internet throughout schools, replaced PCs with lower-cost mobile devices, designed the network to allow students to bring their own devices for “platform agnostic” access to the network.

In 2014, the district had 30 Chromebooks in use in a single classroom at Brownsville Elementary. In 2015, the number of Chromebooks in use increased to 2,220 for students in grades 7-8 and grades 2-6 at Brownsville. In 2016 the total number of Chromebooks reached 6,100 with 1-to-1 access added for grades 5 and 6.

Over 400 Chromebooks have been checked out to CKSD staff.

The district considered using laptops that ran Windows, but decided to use Chromebooks instead because they had batteries that could last an entire school day, because they were compatible with Office 365 and because the Chromebooks were less expensive.

The district is developing a policy for social media, working on a parent’s guide to school technology and working on data and privacy issues. One of the issues that is not yet addressed is ensuring that all students have equitable access to the internet while at home.