In a classroom in the Sisters School District, getting eight or 10 laptops running at once isn’t necessarily a problem.

But if a teacher wants 30 students in a classroom to get online at the same time, the Internet connection will slow down, making schoolwork a challenge. That’s one example of what the school district is trying to improve as officials plan a long-term technology upgrade for schools.

For the district, it’s part of a move away from textbooks and into a world where updated information is only a click away. Superintendent Jim Golden said the district won’t be buying new textbooks as the technology upgrade unfolds. That will set the stage for the district to gradually phase out textbooks and put the savings toward technology instead.

Still, it won’t come cheaply or quickly — the work is expected to be done in phases during the next few years. If everything were upgraded immediately, it would cost close to $1 million.

Though there’s not enough money to do everything at once, the district hopes to do part of the work in the next fiscal year, which starts in July.

“The real thing that we’re looking at to really push out toward the future is to get more connectivity in our district so we can get more technology in the hands of students,” said Todd Pilch, the district’s director of technology.

That’s a better path than textbooks, Golden said, adding that — compared to the Internet — information in textbooks becomes quickly outdated.

“It’s much better for us to invest our limited resources in technology rather than textbooks,” Golden said.

He said the district’s teachers can design instruction to match the state standards for education using online resources. For students, the experience also will teach them how to filter out bad information online — a crucial skill for the 21st century, Golden said.

“That’s going to be the way they find information,” he said. “Nobody that’s a school-age student now is going to go buying big, blocky books anymore.”

Textbooks aren’t cheap, either. Just one textbook can cost between $70 and $90, which adds up quickly in a district of about 1,200 students.

Pilch is working on a list of projects to be completed in the upcoming months and years ahead. The district’s existing technology infrastructure is about five years behind the curve, Pilch said.

The district’s computers are of varying ages too, manufactured between 2002 and 2011, according to a presentation Pilch gave the school board in a work session last week.