“A former Cobb County commissioner, accusing school officials of planning to misspend taxpayers’ money, has filed a lawsuit to stop a laptop computer program,” The Associated Press reports. “Former Commissioner Butch Thompson filed a lawsuit Tuesday claiming that voters were not informed that a 1 percent sales tax would be used to start the program.”
“County voters approved the tax in 2003. As they did, school officials said they would replace students’ “obsolete workstations.” The lawsuit contends that language was not specific enough to inform voters that the system intended to provide computers for all students in grades six through 12,” AP reports. “‘I didn’t vote for laptops for every student in the county, and I don’t think anyone else did,’ Thompson said. ‘In essence, they took funds designated for one purpose and used it for something else.'”
AP reports, “The first phase of the program costs about $25 million, which the school board approved in April. The system began distributing Apple iBook laptops to some of its more than 7,100 teachers last week. It has named four high schools as pilot sites where students will get iBooks next school year. The first phase of the program also calls for upgrading middle school computer labs starting next fall. The Cobb program eventually could distribute 63,000 iBooks to all teachers and all students in grades six through 12, if the school board approves the rest of the program in coming years.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Slow Apple news day? The Cobb County Soap Opera (and you thought it was over, huh?) butts its ugly head into our peaceful moment of silence. Yippie!
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Cobb County school board approves Apple Mac plan; could eventually distribute 63,000 iBooks – April 29, 2005
Henrico school board dumps Apple Macs, picks Dells with Windows – April 29, 2005
Cobb County school officials intend to move forward with Apple iBook program – April 21, 2005
Cobb Commission chief urges delay in Apple iBook program, says issue has become too emotional – April 20, 2005
No conflict of interest in ongoing Cobb County Apple iBook saga – April 19, 2005
More controversy in Atlanta-area school district’s plan to buy Apple iBooks – April 16, 2005
Cobb County Georgia approves first phase of plan that could equip schools with 63,000 Apple iBooks – April 15, 2005
Atlanta-area school district on verge of deal for 31,000 Apple iBooks – April 12, 2005
Cobb teachers voice concerns over using Macs for proposed laptop program – March 29, 2005
Cobb County Georgia meeting discusses plan to equip schools with 63,000 Apple iBooks – February 24, 2005
Report: 90 percent of emails opposed to Georgia’s Apple iBook program – February 10, 2005
65,000 Apple iBooks for Georgia schools one of the largest school laptop programs in the country – February 10, 2005
Georgia school district to propose 63,000 Macs for students and teachers – February 07, 2005
Changing to OS X will not instantly reduce the amount of staff to “one casual guy” – just because someone has a Mac doesn’t mean it won’t break, they won’t delete files or they won’t know how to turn it on.
Mac/Windows/Linux – whatever – manage them right and maintenance time/resources will goes down – in a perfect would, most of the 40 hours of the work week would be spent reading technical articles while occasionally glancing at server logs – but one thing that will never go down is the amount of training that people will want for their system. People aren’t usually hired for their computer literacy skills – training is left up to the IT staff.
And no matter how many times you tell people how to use their computer, they’d rather you did it for them.
Does anyone ever resort to such measures to prevent someone from spending money on wintel products? Or is something more sinister afoot?