The Northampton Area High School Class of 2017 is set to graduate in about two weeks, with commencement 4 p.m. June 3 at Stabler Arena, Bethlehem.

The next class, the NAHS Class of 2018, is already set to make history.

The rising seniors will be the first NAHS senior class to have district-issued laptop computers.

In fact, all 1,800 NAHS students will have Chromebooks when the 2017-18 school year begins this fall.

The high school students join 1,350 Northampton Area Middle School students who have had Chromebooks during the 2016-17 school year as part of Northampton Area School District’s Project PRIDE, which stands for PRoject-based Inquiry-based, Digitally Enriched learning.

A Project PRIDE parent information meeting will be held 6:30 p.m. June 6 at NAHS.

A technology update was presented at the May 22 NASD Board of Education meeting by Kurt Paccio, NASD director of technology; Patrice Turner, NAMS principal; Robert Steckel, NAHS principal; and Michael Lopata, NAHS assistant principal.

During a meeting with a parent and student, Turner said she was told, “You just opened 21st-century learning to me.”

“At the end of the next school year, all our secondary students will have the one-to-one device,” NASD Superintendent of Schools Joseph Kovalchik said. “We have academic equity for all of our students.”

A Chromebook, first sold in 2011, is a laptop operating on the Linux-based Chrome OS - hence, its name. Firms selling them include Acer, Samsung, LG Electronics and Dell. Schools are the largest category of Chromebook customers. NASD has purchased Dell Chromebooks.

“Our students’ future depends on the computer,” Paccio said during the approximate 40-minute PowerPoint presentation and discussion before school directors and administrators.

At the May 8 board meeting, school directors approved the voluntary transfer of Cornelius McHugh, NAHS science teacher, as temporary long-term substitute technology facilitator at NAHS, effective for the 2017-18 school year.

“We were able to allocate our staff without hiring new people,” Turner said.

At the Dec. 19, 2016, meeting, the NASD Board of Education approved $400,000 in districtwide curriculum and technology purchases.

“We have to be prepared for the middle school student who is used to the one-to-one use [when the student advances to the high school],” Steckel said.

At the Nov. 21, 2016, board meeting, middle school students demonstrated their use of the Chromebooks to school directors.

Chromebooks are to be distributed to NAHS students in August.

“We will provide multiple times and options (for students to pick up Chromebooks),” Lopata said.

A survey found that approximately 98 percent of district households have high-speed Internet access.

A Project PRIDE pilot program was held in spring 2016. It was expanded to grades 6, 7 and 8 at NAMS last fall for the 2016-17 school year.

NASD began working on Project PRIDE a decade ago, in 2007. A Pennsylvania’s Classrooms for the Future program and Keystones to Opportunities grant helped implement it.

In 2014-15, the district established a 21st-century learning committee to study one-to-one computing and learning programs.

During spring and summer 2015, administrative research and planning took place.

For more information on Project PRIDE, visit projectpride.nasdschools.org.