Hamber Faces Laptop, Projector Funding Shortage

Photo Credit: Olivia Gowans-Hoar

Eric Hamber currently owes over $180,000 in repayments, due to the costs of installing more than 40 LCD projectors throughout the school and televisions in select classrooms.

Although the construction costs for Hamber’s new seismically safe school building were primarily provided by the Ministry of Education and Child Care, technology was not part of the scope of the project. As a result, no construction money was allocated to pay for new projectors, televisions, and desktops.

However, despite not possessing the necessary funds, Hamber’s administration chose to install these pieces of technology.

 Mr. J. Lauzon (Administration), who joined Hamber’s school administration this year and was not involved in the decision, believes the choice was made because, “it was easier, and it made more sense to install the projectors at the time of construction, as opposed to waiting until the construction was over, and then retrofitting technology into existing walls.”

Mr. Lauzon praised the projectors as a “great way to finish the building. He believes that the installation of the projectors would have been more expensive if put in after the building was constructed, as workers would have had to rip out existing walls to add in wiring for the projectors. 

Additionally, Mr. Lauzon said that he wants the costs to be fully refunded by the Vancouver School Board (VSB). “[Eric Hamber] can now try to advocate for the board to pay. And we do know things are expensive but we think it's worth it. [Our students] are worth it.” 

He also stated that the $180,000 installation costs had “left [the school] with that deficit, or debt, to repay.” However, in response to a request for comment from The Nest, the VSB said that “while there is $180,000 in new technology expenses outside of the Ministry-provided funding, it is important to note Eric Hamber is not in a deficit.”

Mr. Lauzon has asked for a meeting with Hamber’s Director of Instruction Aaron Davis, the VSB’s Secretary-Treasurer Flavia Coughlan, and one of the VSB’s associate superintendents, to explain Hamber’s financial situation and request the school board assist with a repayment plan. 

“At this time, the new school is in a situation where we’re having to borrow laptops from the district for our grad assessments,” he said. “So we’re borrowing technology.”

Multiple departments at Eric Hamber have been in urgent need of additional technology resources, like desktop computers and laptops, for years.

Eric Hamber’s ADST department has been in need of a new set of desktop computers for the past seven years. According to Ms. S. Labrie (Technical Studies), when she first came to Hamber seven years ago, the previous technology teacher informed her that the school was going to replace their current desktops; the VSB’s IT Services had deemed them close to the end of their working life. 

Ms. Labrie explained that there was also a conversation with Hamber’s previous principal, Ms. Jensen, regarding the need for new desktops, “so they were very aware that this was something that was coming around.”

However, Ms. Labrie, as well as the rest of the ADST department, has yet to receive updated technology for their classes. “In the most amazing, glorious, fantastic, dreamy world, we would have had new technology when moving into the new school,” she said.

Ms. Labrie also said that the desktops she works with now are often laggy and have shorter battery lives, which is a problem, as the programs that her drafting classes use require large amounts of processing power and energy. In order to provide students with the best technology possible in the new school, the ADST Department combined the best computers from electronics and robotics with the best computers from the drafting lab to create one shared computer lab.

With the limited resources, students need to be very efficient with their class time in order to complete work. “We have a protocol [where if students] are working on the computers, they have to come in right away and to log in right away,” said Ms. Labrie.

Xavier Fell (11), a drafting student, believes the desktops available to him are “unusable”  and wishes he had access to better tech.  

Additionally, Ms. K. Best (Visual Arts) has been waiting on new laptops for years. “The laptops that we currently have for photography are ten years old,” shared Ms. Best, explaining that the IT department at the VSB is unable to service them as a result. 

Her photography students use DSLR cameras when taking photos, and the images are saved on SD cards. The only way to transfer photos out of the SD card is to have students plug them into a computer and upload them. Without regular access to computers or laptops, students have no way to consistently submit, share, or view their photos. 

In the past, Ms. Best has had to come up with short-term solutions to keep her photography course running smoothly. For instance, students would be given hand-me-down laptops that used to belong to teachers that would quickly decrease in usability due to their age.

Furthermore, when she went to turn on her collection of old laptops at the beginning of this year, she discovered that two thirds of her laptops could not properly connect to Teams. Since then, she’s had to adapt to a lack of functional laptops when teaching both her classes of photography this semester.  

“What I’ve been doing is trying to book the computer lab once a week, so we can get in and upload,” she said. “It just means that students aren’t getting the kind of immediate feedback and reflection that they might get from me or their peers because they’re not able to post photos [on Teams] and see what other students are doing in real time.”

The Library Learning Commons has also requested a new class set of desktops and a laptop cart for students. 

According to Mr. Lauzon, it is common for public schools to lack updated technology. “Our school is not special in that every school that I’ve been to struggles with keeping up with technology,” he said. “There is this huge demand for technology and it is very expensive.” Since the VSB’s operational budgets do not allocate funds for technology upgrades, schools are often left to fundraise for new tech.

 In response to a request for comment from The Nest, VSB Communications explained that “within the financial planning cycle, [the] VSB regularly assesses technology needs to support learning for students throughout the District.”

On Oct. 1, Mr. Lauzon sent out an email to the families of students requesting donations to “help purchase LCD projectors and two new class sets of laptops.” As of now, Hamber has raised $20,000 off of donations alone.

Mr. Lauzon wishes for the money generated from donations to go towards purchasing additional technology, like computers for the library or desktops for drafting, rather than pay for technology that has already been installed, like the LCD projectors.