N&R follows up High Point Enterprise report that Amplify — supplier for Guilford County Schools —is getting out of the tablet business.
Amplify officials declined to comment, but GCS chief of staff Nora Carr said “we’re full steam ahead for this upcoming school year, and we anticipate that they will honor their contractual agreement with us.”
Carr got a dig in on school funding—or supposed lack thereof—much the same way school board member Linda Welborn did in the HPE write-up:
Even after suspending the use the tablets in 2013, Guilford leaders considered expanding the use of tablets to elementary and high schools.
That’s not off the table, Carr said, but chronic budget woes are hurting the chances of an expansion.
“We don’t have specific plans. Certainly, the vision remains the same,” she said.
Resources that would have gone toward buying devices for elementary and high school students have instead been used to make up for shortcomings in state and local funding, she said. Now, putting devices in the hands of all students would require new funding. Green and his staff have made no recommendation to the Guilford County Board of Education on securing that funding.
Apparently a $30 million federal Race to the Top grant doesn’t go as far as it once did.
