What happens when you mix money and one of the biggest school districts in the country?
Answer: You get crazy, unnecessary spending.
Recently, the Los Angeles Unified School District has decided that the best way to spend money it barely has is to give every student an Apple iPad.
According to Los Angeles Times education reporter Howard Blume, the district voted in August to spend $1 billion on the project, half of which would go to $700 iPads for every student and the rest to installation of wireless networks.
The details of the agreement haven’t been smoothed out and there is a lot of uncertainty.
Who will reimburse the LAUSD if a kid breaks the iPad by accident?
Some parents won’t be able to afford to pay the district back if this happens.
Would the child get left behind in the classroom if his parents decide to not let him get an iPad?
What happens if some hooligans decide to target these students and actively seek out to steal these iPads?
Are parents responsible for replacing them?
There are too many uncertain variables that make this whole iPad decision too risky.
The blatant, trigger-happy spending of this board is ridiculous.
There is no real reason to believe that giving iPads will greatly improve learning when electronics have been proven to be distractions in the classroom.
There is a reason why LAUSD schools don’t let students use their phones in class, and giving iPads to them defeats the purpose of eliminating personal electronics from the classroom.
The money that is going to these iPads would be better spent on other things like new classrooms, more teachers and revamping older schools.
Instead of giving students iPads, the district should build more computer labs in its schools.
Giving students the freedom to take these expensive electronics wherever they want is a terrible idea because it can only lead to trouble.
Trusting adolescents and thinking they will use these iPads wisely is naive on the district’s part.
With the new technology coming out, kids are more tech savvy than ever before.
Just recently, students from Roosevelt High School figured out how to gain access to blocked websites from iPads.
The protocols in place to keep websites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter from getting accessed clearly are not working.
With the way that word of mouth travels, it’s only a matter of time before all LAUSD students figure out a way to bypass security measures.
LAUSD has clearly made a terrible choice with this, decision and because of this students and parents will suffer in the long run.
