County schools officials acknowledge that the initial estimated cost – $18 million – for providing 42,000 students an iPad over the next few years is a big number to swallow. Superintendent Rick Smith, who unveiled the proposal, said the number looks “scary.”
True, but relative to what?
Relative to the cost of a half-dozen new schools to relieve overcrowding and residential shift at $20 million to nearly $40 million apiece?
Relative to the cost to stay in the game with a sharp generational technology shift that is now needed here to keep our students competitive with their peers elsewhere (Seattle? Shanghai? Salzburg?) for college, for jobs and for the higher-paying industries that this county, and country, hope to keep or entice?
Or is it “scary” relative to the equally scary cost of failure to keep up with rapidly rising standards for learning and technology — a failure that essentially would doom too many of our students to backwater schools, and that would effectively lower the boom on our community’s future economic prospects?