
<p> </p>
<p>PSESD also had a presentation on what's happening in the legislature regarding funding.  A summary is:</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>IT Academy funding is included </li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There has been an increase in the amount available for student technology from $56/student to $83/student</li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>OER (Open Education Resources) has been funded again</li>
</ul>
<p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>President Obama announced on Wednesday of last week that there is an initiative to connect education to broadband within 5 years (hope to reach 99% of students).  There was discussion that it looks like T1 and TII funding will be repurposed for this goal.</p>
<p>RTTT - 18 sub projects are in the works</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 7 schools are competing</li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Digital stem tools - 62 schools are implementing blended learning across the state - Bethel, Franklin Pierce, Highline are piloting blended learning for their districts</li>
</ul>
<p>A state auditor has announced that their is a problem with the Apple sole source letter and it is not being accepted in some instances</p>
<p>There is a conference being sponsored by Micro K12 and I have asked the rep to post the information on the NWERA website.</p>
<p>They had a ACPE debriefing - are any of you familiar with this conference?  It is held in Oregon in May and a lot of school districts attend.  I will investigate further and see if we can get them to post to our website for next year.</p>
<p>There was also a presentation by Federal Way of the LearnPad, they are piloting for their district.   They had very positive feedback on this Android tablet.</p>
<p>Regards,</p>
<p>Karen Tennyson</p>
<p>Executive Director, NWERA</p>