If you have read my blogs in the past, you know that I work in higher ed, and it has hopefully come out that I am passionate about education. In fact, my career was supposed to be in education. I went to college to be a teacher, did my student teaching in a high school in Boston and was fully ready to start until I did not get a job teaching. Instead, I got a job working in technology in a high school. The rest, as they say, is history. Over the years, however, I have stayed involved in public education through volunteer work, including serving on the school board in my town. So, although I work at a private college, and that is what I write about, this blog is a bit different. Today I am writing and thinking about what the pandemic has cost our students in the K-12 system.

A cursory search of the internet or casual conversation with an educator will show you that our students have suffered greatly during the past two years. Take a moment and consider a student who was in first grade in March of 2020. This child was probably six years old and at the start of what most educators consider the most productive several months of school. Then they were sent home. For most school systems across the U.S., the 2020-21 academic year was scattered. Students rotated in and out of school and went into quarantine. The 2021-22 school year started out better, but still, there were countless absences due to quarantine and case numbers. That same student, now eight years old and in the third grade, has not had a normal school year in two years. This example can be applied across ages and grades — with different consequences.

What does this have to do with IT or AV? We have told ourselves through this that we have good solutions. Students have computers, tablets or Chromebooks, and we can just do virtual learning. We have sold and installed products to assist schools with remote learning. Yet, we have ignored the fact that many families don’t have access to these tools and that many schools don’t have these to give out. Even for families with a comfortable income, it is unlikely that every person in a given household has their own computer. Whether we experience it or not, it is also true that many families don’t have internet access at home. In fact, in rural areas, families may not even have an option to get internet.

Those of us who work in the technology fields have a responsibility to be clear with educators and the people we are selling equipment to that we don’t actually have all the answers. We don’t have tools that solve every problem, and we need to address the fact that many households don’t have the knowledge or resources to put any of these tools to use.

Before I go any further, I do realize that many companies give discounts to public schools, either in product, labor or both. This blog is not to shame anyone or accuse anyone, but a desperate plea that we still need to do more. I certainly understand that many of our businesses, particularly the smaller AV companies, have been hit pretty hard through the pandemic. They may feel like they don’t have very much to give, and that may be true. I will argue, though, that these decisions need to be made with the future of your business in mind. It is not long until we start seeing people coming into the employment space who lived through this very chaotic educational experience. They are not going to have the skills and knowledge that those before them had. Ten years from now, we will likely see major gaps in reading and math skills amongst high school graduates. So, what can we do right now?

As technologists, we do have unique and valuable knowledge. We can volunteer at our local schools by showing teachers how to use the technology or how to troubleshoot and install equipment. We can make sure that the technology we are selling them works reliably and is a solid investment. We could volunteer to help our local communities write grants that could be used to expand broadband in rural communities. We could help them to write grants to purchase equipment for families that can not afford it. Doing these things is not only good for business but is good for all of society.