Just under half a million dollars… that’s the amount of money the Perry Community School District spent on implementing the one-to-one laptop program.
The exact dollar figure is something Technology Director Rich Nichols is well aware of.
“This amount is not taken lightly, in fact if you come into my work room, I have this number written up on our white board and it stays there” says Nichols. “I think everyone should understand that not only myself but all of the administration and teachers understand that this money, when we fund one project other projects don’t get funded. $500,000 is a lot of teachers, it’s a lot of textbooks, it’s a lot of physical resources for our classrooms and for our facilities and so for us to make this type of investment in this tool, means that we’re really behind it.”
Nichols says the decision to start the one-to-one program is one they thought long and hard about and spent a lot of time researching the pros and cons.
“It will never be taken lightly, the amount of money we’re spending. We plan on having dividends on this going forward and I don’t think that any of us would have put this type of money, time and energy, because if you add man hours and all of the things that we’ve done, we would have never have put this type of money into this if we didn’t think that it was good for kids” says Nichols.
Each 6th through 12th grade student having a laptop should also cut down on cost for other resources such as paper, printing and textbooks.