Big Sunday N&R front-pager on Guilford County Schools’ tablet debacle:
Guilford County Schools wanted to connect its students to the latest technology.
Instead, it got product delays. Poor quality cases. Broken screens. Melted chargers.
Six weeks into the school year, after $3.2 million and many frustrations, the district put a halt to its ambitious tablet computer initiative — at least for now.
More than 15,000 of the devices sit unused until further notice.
“No one’s more disappointed than we are,” said Alan Duncan, Guilford County Board of Education chairman.
Meanwhile the Rhino’s Paul Clark –welcome back—-pulls no punches when breaking down the situation:
The Friday, Oct. 4 recall by Guilford County Schools of 15,000 tablet computers issued to middle school students and teachers resulted from poor oversight by the school board, a lack of technical knowledge among school administrators and a rush to spend a $30 million federal Race to the Top grant that Guilford County Schools made a big public splash about winning.
OK, so the board approved the Amplify contract by a 10-1 vote –Darlene Garrett being the lone ‘no’ vote — so whatever concerns the vast majority of the board had about this deal they put them aside to get this deal going. Pretty incredible that board member Amos Quick –who showed exasperation (rightly so) over the sewage problems at Bluford Elementary—actually asked why they weren’t privy to the other responses to the RFP, to which chief information officer Terence Young replied “it is not here….I can’t provide that. I’m sorry.” Incredible.
Again no excuses for Amplify making crappy tablets. But the bottom line is GCS —board and staff —was the last stopgap before those crappy tablets before they were put into the kids’ hands. Unfortunately they failed, still in awe of all the free money being provided by our wonderful federal government.
