Letters to the editor are sent to a publication to reflect the views and concerns of its readers. Letters to Arlingtonian are encouraged and can be emailed to the editor at arlingtonian@uaschools.org.
Teachers and administrators said the iPads would be better. Their defense boils down to the iPads having touchscreens with Apple Pencil support and rejecting students anger about their lack of keyboards by saying that unlike previous generations, ours was comfortable typing on touchscreens and didn’t need physical keyboards, while citing no real evidence or data.
Months after they’ve been issued, many students will still openly criticize the iPads. Their lack of a keyboard being used as an easy out when their opinions are questioned, yet neither the school district or any organization has bothered to collect meaningful data on students use of the iPads. Arlingtonian found in the fall issue of the magazine that only 48 percent of students “feel the technology issues have been resolved,” but being a voluntary survey, the results could be skewed. In Eight in Eight in the same issue, seven of eight students were quoted as having feelings against the iPads. Of course, a sample size of eight doesn’t really get anywhere either. All this lack of data leaves us in the dark as to how good of a decision the district made.
This lack of data goes hand in hand with a lack of information being accessible to students online, with many websites blocked by Lightspeed Systems. The blocking of Amazon, for example, can easily be justified. But many other reputable sites, including Wikipedia, require you to be logged in to view them, hinting that they are not available for other age groups. The lack of online content keeps young children away from raw information that could change their perception of the world.
In an age where it can be difficult to discern fact from fiction, please UA Schools, don’t make it any harder than it should be.
Freshman Cato Weisberg
The new Upper Arlington High School which is set to open to students in the Autumn of 2021 will not be outfitted with solar panels. I find this particularly disappointing because the current high school has solar panels. Installed in 2007, these panels were intended to provide 2 percent of the school’s energy, and they’ve saved thousands in electrical charges over their lifetime, but it’s unclear whether the panels are still in use. It’s nevertheless disappointing that the new school won’t take advantage of the sun’s power.
It’s not as though the idea to have panels on the new school wasn’t presented to the powers that be. In 2018, in a survey regarding plans for the new school, five responses expressed a desire for the school to have solar panels.
We can look to data to evaluate the consequences of this reprehensible design overlook. In 2008, the first full year the High School had solar panels, the panels generated 1455.36 kilowatt hours of electricity. Assuming this to be constant, losing these panels corresponds to a pernicious 2147.14 pounds of carbon dioxide being released into our community each year, according to the most recent data from the EPA’s Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database.
While the District typically stands proudly as a bastion of innovation in central Ohio, this aspect of the District’s Master Plan ought not be a source of pride for Upper Arlington residents.