One of the nation's most ambitious programs to
equip teachers and students with laptop computers "is no
longer an option," declared Kathie Johnstone, chair of the
Cobb County, Ga., school board. A county judge ruled against
the laptop program on July 29, and Johnstone's announcement
came after the school board met with its attorney for two
hours and 15 minutes on Aug. 1.
The school board reportedly has 30 days to appeal the
judge's decision, and Johnstone said the board is still
weighing that option.
School officials in Cobb County, Ga., saw their plans for a
massive one-to-one laptop initiative halted--at least
temporarily--when a county Superior Court judge ruled that
officials had not properly informed local taxpayers how the
school system intended to use the money collected through a
sales tax passed in 2003 that would have funded the program.
Judge S. Lark Ingram said her ruling had nothing to do with
the merits of the district's "Power to Learn" program. "Fair
notice of such use was not given to the public when the
referendum for [the sales tax] was held," Judge Ingram
declared.
The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by former county
commissioner Butch Thompson to stop Power to Learn. The
program, which was introduced with great fanfare by
Superintendent Joe Redden in February, has been mired in
controversy almost since its inception.
Thompson and former Gov. Roy Barnes, his attorney, argued
at a hearing in July that school officials participated in a
"bait-and-switch operation" when they promised that the 1
percent sales tax would, in part, "refresh obsolete
workstations."
The school system originally had planned to provide more
than 63,000 laptops for all students in grades six through 12,
making Cobb County home to one of the largest educational
laptop programs in the nation, but it scaled back those plans
in April, opting instead to roll out the program on a pilot
basis before extending it to the entire district (see "Critics diminish grand laptop plan.")
Under the revised plan, all teachers in the district were
to receive laptops this year. Current computer connections at
the district's high schools were to be revamped, and as many
as four schools were to become test sites for the laptop
program, while the vast majority of high school students would
not get laptops sooner than next year.
"The Cobb County Board of Education is disappointed in
Friday's court decision regarding the use of [tax] funds for
technology improvements in the school district," said a
statement on the district's web site. The school board was
scheduled to meet Aug. 1 to discuss the program's future.
Barnes argued that school officials should be held to
information they distributed at the time of the vote, when
they estimated they could buy 30,000 computers for students
for about $32 million, as well as use tens of millions of
dollars more--for a total of $76 million--to "refresh" items
such as printers and servers and buy every teacher a
"computing device."
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