“Last November, voters approved Ballot Measure 3A, to provide ongoing funding for computers in the Boulder Valley School District, specifically providing for the replacement of computers every four years. The referendum passed by only 342 votes,” BVSDWatch.org (concerned Boulder Valley teachers, parents, volunteers, and taxpayers who wish to keep a watchful eye on the BVSD School Board and their activities) reports.
“At the January 24th BVSD board meeting, Robert Hammond, Chief Operations Officer, and Chris King, Deputy Superintendent, made it clear that the Superintendent’s Cabinet has decided to replace the district’s Macs with Hewlett Packard (HP) computers, running Microsoft Windows, over the next four years, with few exceptions,” BVSDWatch.org reports. “Currently 75% of the computers used in classrooms and computer labs are Macs. The goal, for them, is that only around 10% of the computers be Macs four years from now. No input was solicited from teachers, students, parents, or voiunteers, the people who this effects the most. Only HP was approached for a bid, the other BVSD approved vendors, Apple & Dell, were excluded from the bidding process.”
BVSDWatch.org provides a list of questions that concerned people can ask of the Boulder District Representatives and themselves and implores, “Contact your local district represenative (or as many as you like) and the Superintendant, and let them know how you feel about this decision. Get involved, now!”
Direct links to phone and email addresses, the full article, and an online poll, “Should BVSD Replace Macs with HP PCs?” (currently 92.9% “No”) are here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews reader “Rainy Day” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Even students they go directly into the workforce from high school, eschewing higher education – now a greater possibility for Boulder public school students if this short-sighted, ill-advised switch goes through (see “Those who surf the Web using a Mac tend to be better educated and make more money than their PC-using counterparts, according to a report from Nielsen/NetRatings“) – they will likely not be using the operating system they learned in high school. Teach the concepts of computing, not the specifics, since that will result in students being well-rounded and knowing how to use any computer they will encounter. Schools should choose Macs whenever possible since they are easier and cheaper to maintain than Windows PCs. For related info: http://macvspc.info/
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Related MacDailyNews article:
Colorado’s Boulder Valley Schools to dump Macs, switch to Windows PCs – January 25, 2006
thats what i say
Denny Crane
<Only HP was approached for a bid, the other BVSD approved vendors, Apple & Dell, were excluded from the bidding process.>
They have learned well from the current administrations “NO BID CONTRACTS”
It sounds kinda fishy, not just that they’re replacing Macs, but only offering a bid for computers to HP, which isn’t one of their previously approved vendors. Sounds like someone needs to investigate the board’s motives for using HP. Some financial ties??
http://www.g-zus.net/
Let’s hope MDN readers are equally professional about sticking their nose into another town’s business. Offer helpful advice, not flames.
Apparently you forgot your name and your brain. No-bid contracts have been around since Washington’s administration. No one “learned” it from the current one. Try thinking before writing. I voted, but I am sure that if word on this poll gets out and the numbers get ridiculous, this group of charlatans will dismiss it as reflective of Mac zealotry only, and not an indictment of their back-room dealing.
really, no-bids have been around since Washington’s admin? maybe you mean since the current admin works in washington. For some history on these kind of contracts see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-bid_contract
if you have more to add do so there.
Hey Halipukin– how come NASA’s work hasn’t been open to private bids?
This smells worse that an HP engineer’s breath after a garlic, limburger and onion sandwich. Does Hammond have an Uncle Wayman?
I wonder how much of a backhander the guy in school got for going with HP.
He probably has a ‘friend’ who works there.
I would love to see his bank statements!
Hey dufus – even *I* am smart enough to know that my boydriend gave a no bid contract to HALIBURTON for Bosnia. But hey – don’t let facts get in the way of the good internal hate fest you have going on there
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And when wikipedia becomes a serious source of “facts” we are all in DEEP shit. The Wikipedia site is almost as much fun as the daily comics but truth is still not the equivalent of mass misconception.
I think it’s wrong for MDN to post links to members of the school board on these sites for everyone to click. 99% of us don’t live in Boulder Valley and we shouldn’t be writing to their school district en masse to make it look like their is more outrage in their community than there actually is. If we want to send a courteous well written email to the board about why macs are a better decision for their schools, hopefully including points and facts that they haven’t yet considered, then that is fine.
But I don’t think the school board is going to get a couple well written arguments. They are going to get a thousand angry flaming emails.
R, NASA has solicted bids from public corporations since the moon shot. The no-bid contratcs have been reserved for Militray objectives which our lovely govt feel need to be awarded to a select secuirty-cleared few.
In recent years a private space insudtry has emerged, they all do work for the govt under very competitve bids.
As always Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely
If you don’t like or agree wikipedia add your own information, thats the whole point!
Yhe lets teach kids to sit an troubleshoot windows all days since thats most likely what they’ll be doing all day in the windows business world
Perhaps there is a class called “watching your tech guy fix your pc while not being productive 101”
No input was solicited from teachers, students, parents, or voiunteers, the people who this effects the most. Only HP was approached for a bid, the other BVSD approved vendors, Apple & Dell, were excluded from the bidding process.”
Online poll, “Should BVSD Replace Macs with HP PCs?” (currently 92.9% “No”).
Well imagine that? Typical higher management decision to wipe out everything that makes sense without asking imput from the people it effects the most! Let’s break something that isn’t broken. Let’s spend millions of dollars for no reason and replace pefectly good Mac systems with virus sucking spam eating PC crap that will cost more millions of dollars to fix. Add 20 personal from the 2 currently supporting the Macs just to support the PC’s with all the crap they get plus replace all the software that the teachers and students know well with who knows what? 93% say they don’t want it, I’m not surprised at all. I wonder who in the superintendent role is getting paid off by HP?
“No input was solicited from teachers, students, parents, or voiunteers, the people who this effects the most”.
The above is why people should be concerned. Why didn’t they go to the teachers, students, and parents and announce there plans and have them express there concerns with switching before going forward?
Doesn’t the people who use the tools deserve the right to have some say in this matter?
If you are an auto mechanic and I as your manager come up to you and say oh by the way were taking all of your tools away from you today. Here are the stone knives and bear skins you will work with from now on. How do you think that mechanic might feel or react?
Seems like common sense was left out here somewhere.
This reminds me of an incident within a NASA office doing shuttle support operations (Goddard, I think) some years ago. A new information officer came in and saw all these Macs doing their usual yeoman service, plus a smattering of Windows boxes. He decided that, for consistency of support, everything should be running Windows 98.
When the decision was announced he practically had a riot on his hands! These folks were quite happy with their Macs and made their feelings known. This issue went all the way to the Inspector General’s office who ruled that the information officer had failed to perform due diligence, laying out costs, risks, etc. to support his decision. I don’t know how things evolved. But this was in the pre-OSX days. I’m sure he’d have a tougher time today trying to tell an engineer to give up his OSX box for an XP.
The current case seems, once again, to involve people with questionable motives making ill-informed decisions.
I grew up in Boulder and still live near there. Boulder government has been “crooked as a dogs hind leg” for a long time. Hammond and King are undoubtedly getting kickbacks from HP (or someone who they are beholden to is). BVSD has been investigated for misuse of funds etc. before so this comes as no big surprise.
Their logic is very flawed. If you are concerned that your kid is going to get a job using Windows in 5 or 10 years, why NOT give them a Mac now. Today’s Mac will give you a sneak peak at what Windows might look like in 5 or 10 years. Therefore, they will be prepared!
Let the kids learn windows. If they can handle that, they can handle anything.
Everyone go back to sleep…
I SMELL A HP RATT IN BOULDER
Can anyone say KICKBACK?
Although I share many of the sentiments of you that have posted above, it is of regret that I cannot send a letter whoever well written it may or not be to the Board of Educators in the Boulder, Colorado area of the USA.
This is because I am not a US citizen as I live in the UK and a British citizen. I feel that if I do get involved, I’d only make matters worse as after all my countrymen lost the war of Independence in 1776.
It is a matter of ethics as well and I also expect the same from anyone else that reads MDN that is not a US citizen to also not get involved and trust in our fellow Mac users in the USA to do the right thing.
Sure US citizens that are living outside the USA are of course fine to write in and my only suggestion that I echo from above is to do so in a professional manner and not to flame the Board of Educators as you’ll only push them further away from the Macintosh platform.
Thank you.
MW: ‘evidence’ in your arguments provide the Board with factual evidence to support your argument and not just send in matters of your own opinion on their lonesome.
More Macs for the rest of us.
The major problem here is that someone elected to an office for some reason automatically assumes that they are competent. In reality, local elections tend to select for stupid people, because (a) they don’t have the perks that national offices do, and (b) they’re basically jobs that no one really wants to do unless they want petty power over people.
MW: reason, as in “That’s the reason these idiots want to dump Macs.”
I wonder why they didn’t get a bid from Dell. This seems very suspect to me.
I am glad to see advice that non-BVSD folks NOT email (or worse yet flame) the Board of Education here in Boulder, especially with Mac-uber-alles rhetoric that is apt to go nowhere. It won’t help us here in BVSD to get the district to open this decision up to real discussion. They are, after all, elected by us in the district.
If you do want to help, go to http://www.bvsdwatch.org and pitch in. Best info is experience elsewhere–what levers work best to get a school district to reopen a decision like this, what are the pieces of evidence most persuasive to a school district in revisiting or overturning these decisions, examples of districts that did come back and overturn such ham-handed decisions, etc. This kind of help could be critical. Before anybody can argue for a Mac, the district needs to be reconsidering the decision, so lengthy pro-Mac screeds are a hinderence more than a help.
[BTW, I think the poster who thinks gov’t in Boulder is corrupt is way off the mark. Having lived in Boston, where corruption is almost a family business, I’d say that what we are seeing in Boulder is arrogance mixed with incompetence. Heavens knows we have loads of arrogance!]