Background

It has come to our attention that Fort Bend Independent School District HAS APPROVED to make a purchase worth an estimated cost of $18.2 million – $16.5 million of that amount from existing bond money and state grants to purchase iPads for the use of 2nd to 8th graders at all elementary and middle school campuses. Fort Bend Independent School District claims that “the objective of the program is to increase student academic achievement in SCIENCE for grades 2nd to 8th at all elementary and middle school campuses (59 schools).”

The spending will be broken down into two plans detailed below in an fbisd.wordpress.com article:

“The pilot program will require $8M to be spent under the current budget (2011-2012), and will be rolled-out in the 2012/2013 school year at 10 to 12 schools. About $4M on iPads, $3M on network infrastructure, and the remaining $1M between software development, curriculum development, training, project management, and mobile device management software.

Assuming the pilot program is successful; an additional $10M will be spent in the budget for next year (2012-2013), and will be rolled-out in the 2013/2014 school year at the remaining 47 schools. About $9M is for iPads, and the remaining $1M spread between software developments, curriculum development, training, project management, and mobile device management software.”

According to an ABC news article, “Administrations say the money spent on the program would come from bonds, grants and technology funds. As much as they might want to use this money to hire teachers, they say cannot.

"We're not able to use the funds in that way. In this economic climate, we don't anticipate being able to bring back the teachers we've lost in previous years," Stadtfeld said.”

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