When the students returned to the Young Women’s Leadership Academy campus on August 9, they had a great bonus awaiting them: for the first time, they had enough laptops for each student to have their own in class. And these were newer, faster machines than the ones they’d been using.
Those 271 new laptops, plus 20 new desktops for the computer labs, were funded by a 2020 High Impact Grant from Impact San Antonio. And according to Ashlee Guerra-Garza, coordinator of admissions and enrichment at the YWLA secondary campus (grades 6-12), they are making a world of difference for the students.
“We had academic camp (at the end of July). The San Antonio ISD had given us Chromebooks, but we didn’t have enough for all the students,” she said. “But now that we have the Dell laptops (funded by Impact SA), each student was able to have a device, which was amazing.”
The laptops will be vital, she said, because most YWLA students do not have a computer at home. “Having these new devices is so crucial so the students can follow along in class. We are not using physical textbooks anymore; all textbooks are online.”
According to its website, the Young Women’s Leadership Academy is part of the Young Women’s Preparatory Network, a nonprofit organization that partners with public school districts to operate the largest network of all-girls, public, college-prep schools in the nation. All these schools feature a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curriculum, and most of their students are economically disadvantaged.
Since the goal of YWLA is to prepare all students for college, “we want our students to interact with more programming. The new laptops offer that, and they also are not waiting forever for the computer to load because these are fast new machines,” Guerra-Garza said.
The new laptops came in last April, she said, but at that time only about 30 percent of the students were on campus. The rest were distance learning because of Covid. This fall, all students are expected to be back on campus, with social distancing and sanitizing measures in place, she said.
Unlike the Chromebooks, which students were allowed to take home with them, the new laptops will stay on campus, Guerra-Garza said. That way, she said, they are less likely to be dropped or damaged in other ways.
The laptops will also come in handy when tutoring starts in a few weeks, she said. “Students who need tutoring can come in after classes let out for the day, and the laptops will make that easier as well,” she explained.
The students are excited about having fast new machines, Guerra-Garza said.
“Students no longer feel like they’re being left out because now there are enough machines for everyone,” she said.
To see a video about YWLA and the impact of the new laptops, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEm5UMXY0Ng.
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