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LISD considering an option to lease iPads to save money

Chris Roark, croark@starlocalmedia.com | Posted: Thursday, May 21, 2015 3:51 pm

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Lewisville ISD administrators say they have found a way to save some money when it comes to purchasing the next round of iPad Air devices.

Board member Tracy Scott Miller said not buying them at all would be even cheaper.

Craig Martin, LISD’s executive director of purchasing, discussed a plan with the board Monday that would allow LISD to lease the devices though the state bid process. This option was not available before.

Martin said the district needs 6,600 devices for fourth- and seventh-graders to complete its fourth- through 12th-grade technology roll-out district wide.

He said the district can lease the devices for four years with the option to purchase them for $1 at the end of the final year.

Martin said there is $5.4 million in the district’s operating budget reserved for technology for 2014-15. But he said if the district goes with the lease option, about $687,000 a year would be spent on the devices. With the interest rate of 0.49 percent, the total interest would be about $20,000 over four years, or $5,000 a year.

The lease option would also save money off the 2015-16 budget. Martin said reselling the devices after the lease is also possible.

Miller, however, said spending any money is too much considering he hasn’t seen how the 36,000 iPads that have already been distributed have benefited the students.

“I think the district is operating [assuming] it’s going to spend this money,” Miller said. “Yet nothing has been given to us as it relates to answers about how the devices are used, where we have seen the impact as it relates to classroom performance and those types of things.”

Miller asked for the district staff to provide options that show other ways to get the devices, possibly a parent-purchase plan or a form of it.

“There’s been a lot of recognition that the way we rolled out the devices … there could have been things that were done better,” Miller said. “So what we’re saying is, to complete that which we could have done better, we need to buy these 6,600 devices.”

Superintendent Kevin Rogers said the reason the 6,600 devices are needed is because there are some campuses where sixth- and 12-graders don’t have them in the classrooms. The roll-out is scheduled also for new device deployment in fourth- and seventh-grade classes.

“So we need to provide the devices, or those grade levels still don’t have devices like everyone else across the district does,” Rogers said. “That’s why we need to finish the model.”

The board is expected to vote on the item in June.

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