NEW LEXINGTON -- Summer's end might be unwelcome, but New Lexington High School students will have a something to ease their pain this year -- free iPads.
New Lexington City Schools recently signed a three-year lease with Apple. The district will pay $416,316 -- three payments of $138,772 -- and in return will receive 600 32GB iPads with WiFi.
That equates to about $690 per iPad over the three-year lease. That's more than the $599 list price to buy a new iPad outright, but the New Lex deal also comes with a two-year protection plan to cover any software problems plus a small amount of coverage for screen damage, said Principal Bobby Dodd.
The deal also included professional service days for teachers, where Apple reps showed them how to use the new technology, Dodd said.
"We're just really excited," he said. "It's going to be another resource for our kids and teachers to use. ... We're very excited that we're going to be able to do this for our community and our kids."
Students can use the iPads during the school day for free. If they want to take a device home at night, however, the kids will have to pay a $50 insurance fee.
Despite that fee, however, New Lex officials think the iPads will end up saving studentsmoney. For one, online textbooks are cheaper than traditional ones, so New Lex is in the process of recalculating some of its course fees, said Superintendent Tonya Sherburne.
Second, as technology increases, students will need fewer physical supplies, such as binders, papers and pens, she said.
"I'm not going to say you're not going to need any pens or pencils, but you're certainly not going to need the amount of supplies like that they used to need," she said.
The iPads will give students easy access to resources such as the Internet, educational apps and online textbooks with multimedia features, Sherburne said. For example, with a traditional textbook, it's just text and pictures. But with an online textbook, oftentimes there's a video or multimedia activity to go along with the words.
At least for now, New Lex will still use traditional textbooks in conjunction with online, but Sherburne thinks the district will eventually switch to online only.
In fact, she thinks highs schools all over the U.S. will eventually make that transition.
"We're going to phase (traditional books) out. I think education in general is going to phase that out. The online textbooks are just so dynamic," she said.
The iPads are for educational use, but the district likely will download a few fun apps as well, Sherburne said. Students will not have access to download anything on their own.
"They are for school activities. No matter where (students are) using them, they will be filtered, or secured, through our system," she said.
New Lexington has been looking into the iPad lease deal for longer than a year, Sherburne said. The district did a smaller pilot program last year, with 30 students enrolled in its Advanced Placementcourses, and that went very well, she said. After seeing those results, district officials decided it would be beneficial for all high school students to have an iPad.
The district is paying for the lease using money specifically earmarked for technology, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act money, and other grants, Sherburne said. None of that money could have been used to pay personnel salaries or benefits, she said.