School District Leases iPads

Kathie Bassett:

The East Alton Elementary School Board moved forward with the plan to implement a One to One iPad initiative and approved a lease-to-purchase agreement at Tuesday night's meeting.

"We'll be leasing them directly from Apple," Superintendent Virgil Moore said. "At the end of the four-year lease, we will be able to buy the iPads for $1 apiece."

Required by the agreement to lease in bundles of 10 machines, the district plans to order 650 iPads for student use. An additional 70 Mac Book Air laptops will be ordered for teachers to be able to write lessons that can be transferred to the students' iPads.

The cost of the lease payment will be $129,000 per year, Moore said.

"We went through our current budget line by line and decided we could fund the leases ourselves," Moore said. "When we looked at areas that we could reallocate funds from items we wouldn't need to purchase once we have the devices, we were able to find $130,000."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 27, 2012 4:17 AM
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