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School board OKs VR purchase, pay increase for substitutes

By Susanna Meyer 5 min read

New and innovative ways to learn are coming soon to the Marshalltown Community School District, as the board of education approved the purchase of a virtual reality platform along with another multimedia system at their regularly scheduled board meeting Tuesday night.

Superintendent Theron Schutte recommended that the board approve the purchase from Prisms of Reality to be used as a supplemental tool to teach algebra and geometry at Marshalltown High School and Miller Middle School.

Prisms is a company that seeks to help engage students with math by applying it to real world situations through VR technology, something Schutte felt would be especially useful to address pandemic related learning loss.

"I've always thought that virtual reality was really cool, but it's really expensive, and cool in and of itself doesn't necessarily cut it when we're talking about moving the bar in student achievement," he said. "What I really liked about this was the fact that it was laser focused on using the application to supplement math curriculum and eventually, science curriculum and helping kids understand what historically have been difficult concepts."

One module in the curriculum shows students the flight paths of two planes and requires them to solve linear equations to safely dispatch the flights from their gates without collision. That scenario is one of several that are available within the program.

Prior to his recommendation, Schutte also consulted Director of Instruction Shauna Smith, MHS Principal Jacque Wyant and MHS math teacher Angela Pierce, all of whom were enthusiastic about the idea. Wyant and Pierce had the opportunity to try the VR platform, and they found it very useful.

"The concepts, for example, in algebra, hit some of our, what we call priority standards in mathematics. So they would bring alive, in algebra especially, some concepts which seem kind of nebulous to students," Wyant said.

Prisms initially contacted Schutte about implementing this program in MCSD curriculums, which he felt was due to a couple of key factors.

"I think part of the reason that they reached out to us was, number one, Marshalltown has a long history of being innovative as it relates to STEM, particularly in the math and science areas, and I would say most recently, the technology too," Schutte said. "The other thing is that the creator of this has been very passionate about wanting to get these devices in the hands of underserved populations."

Prisms originally offered to provide one classroom's worth of headsets free of charge, and then the district would only have to pay for the initial purchase of the program and the subsequent annual licensing of up to 900 students. Schutte, however, asked if they could provide a second classroom set, so it could be implemented at the middle school level as well. Prisms readily agreed, given that the MCSD is the first school district in Iowa to use the program.

The board unanimously approved the purchase of the Prisms program at a cost of $33,020 to be purchased with Federal ESSER III -- COVID learning loss funding.

In addition to Prisms, the board also unanimously approved the purchase of the Bluum LU-DUO-2 multimedia system to be used at Lenihan Intermediate School in the amount of $49,701.88, also to be paid for through the ESSER III funds.

The LU-DUO-2 system includes projectors, lights and speakers, as well as various learning modules, all of which are used to create interactive, engaging learning experiences for students.

"I would say it predominantly would be used in physical education, due to the fact that it would be located in the gymnasium, but one of the things that we really like is there is curricular applications for pretty much all of the core contents and some of the other exploratory areas too," Schutte said. "It does lend itself to the ability to collaborate or to team up between the physical education department and the other core areas there."

An increase in pay for substitute teachers was also on the agenda, and Director of Human Resources Nora Ryan recommended that the board approve an increase from $130 to $140 a day for subs, retroactively effective to Aug. 23.

In addition to the $10 increase per day, after parsing through data relating to how many days the district's regular substitutes work, Ryan found that on average, they put in about 43 days per year not including several outliers who were especially active. Ryan said about 60 percent of the MCSD's substitutes work fewer than 50 days.

To incentivize more days of work for substitutes, Ryan also recommended increasing pay for short term substitutes to $160 per day, starting on day 51 of work, through the end of the school year. This does not include long-term substitutes who are in the same position for 20 or more consecutive days, who will still receive roughly $175 per day.

These pay increases received unanimous approval from the board.

In other business, the board:

• Met new 2022-2023 student school board representatives Natalie Andrade, Abraham Madrigal Farias, Jaxson Eisenbarth and Yessenia Alvarez Zamora.

• Heard a presentation on the MCSD Mentor Program.

• Approved the recommendation of an assistant coach position and stipend for girls wrestling, as well as an esports coach position and stipend recommendation.

• Approved the 2022-2023 superintendent and board goals.

• Heard a communications update from Communications Director Adam Sodders.

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Contact Susanna Meyer

at 641-753-6611

or smeyer@timesrepublican.com

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