It has been fifteen years since CHS has opened, and students do not have access to unlimited Wi-Fi due to expenses and district policies.

MCVSD Director of Technology Chris Widmer assured that a plan to enable Wi-Fi to the students and teachers is underway as of December 2015, but funding has not been initiated yet. Some things that would need to be bought are transmitters, a central controller and annual support as well as maintenance charges.

Once the vendor is picked, the first year’s costs for system implementation will be approximately $175,000 to $200,000, which is quite different from last year’s prediction of $95,000 to $150,000. On top of that, the annual cost is projected to be around $15,000 to $20,000.

“As soon as funds are available, we plan to continue work towards our guest wireless initiative in support of student-owned and staff-owned devices connecting to a secure guest Wi-Fi network,” Widmer said.

The plan is to start small with one vendor and to allow a school to test out the Wi-Fi system and eventually it will be available to all the MCVSD academies.

In an October Inkblot survey, 71 percent of CHS students felt that Wi-Fi was needed in school, and 60 percent said that they would use it for school-related apps.

Like the majority of the learners’ answers from the survey, sophomore Marie Schobel of Sea Girt believes that wifi for students is beneficial because they need it to check their grades on PowerSchool, access the Google apps for assignments and use the Internet if they feel the need to research a topic that is relevant to class.

“People are always saying that everything is cyber now, so CHS students need to use it. Without the wifi, we can’t get those documents that we need and we can’t get to Google Classroom to get what we need,” Schobel said.