SPD puts pressure on the digitization of schools in Darmstadt

• ofJens Joachim

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All Darmstadt schools are not to be equipped with WiFi until 2024. Mayor and school director Rafael Reisser (CDU) refers to necessary structural interventions for which the real estate management of the city is responsible.

Supplemented version from Friday, January 8th, 2021, 8 a.m .: The Darmstadt SPD wants the sluggish equipment of the before the local elections in March schools with a digital infrastructure make it a topic in the municipal committees. The parliamentary group chairman Michael Siebel and Tobias Reis, the school policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group in the Darmstadt city council, announced this in an interview with the FR.

The Social Democrats consider it insufficient that, according to the city’s media development plan adopted last autumn, only a third of the Darmstadt schools With WLAN Is provided. Here the head of the debt department, Mayor Rafael Reisser (CDU), has to “put more pressure” on in order to promote structural changes, says Reis. As Reisser’s answer to a major request from the SPD has shown, there is also a considerable need in the city for support for IT equipment in schools by appropriate specialists.

WLAN at all schools in Darmstadt only until 2024

According to Reisser, all should not be until 2024 Darmstadt schools as part of the Digitalpakt funding program WLAN be equipped. The neighboring one is more ambitious Darmstadt-Dieburg district. According to a communication from the district, all secondary schools as well as elementary and special schools should already be by the summer WLAN receive. That would be five by February Model schools almost completely switched to teaching with interactive boards and tablets.

The reason for the dragging equipment is the “structural interventions in the building fabric required in many schools to create structured underground cabling”. The real estate management of the city is responsible for the realization, writes Reißer.

Almost all schools in Darmstadt are connected to the fiber optic network

According to Mayor Reisser, “everyone Darmstadt schools a bandwidth with which applications could be used over the Internet. In 2018, according to Reisser, around 30 percent of the Darmstadt schools to the Fiber optic network connected to the city administration in order to be supplied with broadband internet.

Since summer 2019, a large part of the remaining from the city’s IT department has been involved in a large project schools to the urban Fiber optic network been connected.

At the beginning of December 2020, when the SPD request was processed in the city administration, it was said that “in the next few weeks” the fiber optic connections would still be available District school Arheilgen, the Friedrich Ebert School, the Ludwig Schwamb School, the Wilhelm Hauff School and the Herrmannstrasse branch of the Mornewegschule completed.

Some schools in Darmstadt are not yet connected to the fiber optic network

According to Reisser, only three school locations would then not be connected to the municipal one Fiber optic network connected: The Heinrich Hofmann School should only be connected to the fiber optic network at the new location. The Martinstrasse branch of the Alice Eleonor School is “given up in perspective” according to Reißer. In addition, the costs of a connection would be “extremely high”. And for that Andersenschule According to the head of the school, because of their location and the distance to the city’s fiber optic network, “extensive planning and awarding of contracts are necessary” in order to connect the school to the fiber optic network.

When the SPD asked where there were structural difficulties that made it difficult to lay fiber optic cables, Reisser, the previous location of the Wilhelm Hauff School will only be connected to the fiber optic network after the school has been completely renovated, but the interim location will be connected directly.

Erich Kästner School in Kranichstein is expanded and modernized

On the other hand, reported Reisser, is on the property of the Erich Kästner Elementary School in Kranichstein already the fiber optic cable. The final assembly can only take place when the new technical room has been built during the ongoing renovation, which is now the case.

The city council has recently decided to use the risk surcharge for the construction of the extension of the Darmstadt primary school, with around 600 pupils, and the infrastructure of the entire complex Erich Kästner School to bring technically up to date. This applies above all to data and media technology, the importance of which has just now become clear, as well as climate protection, according to a press release. In renovation and expansion of the Erich Kästner School the city will now invest almost eleven million euros.

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