Lawrence school district high schoolers will be issued MacBook laptops again next year after a year of using iPads.
Superintendent Jeanice Swift said at the previous board meeting that great interest from high school students prompted the shift back. But the district had transitioned to smaller devices in fall 2024 because repair and upkeep costs for the MacBooks were too high.
The board voted 6-1 in January 2023 — current board President Kelly Jones the dissenting member — to make the budget-driven switch. Some students and faculty at that meeting raised concerns about equity and efficiency, especially in specialized classes, such as coding, journalism, video and photography.
Each high school student was issued an iPad during the 2024-25 year, and the devices served other uses across the district, while the district continued purchasing 2,300 MacBooks for high school students and staff for temporary checkout.
The district made its final iPad lease payment in January this year, amounting to around $1 million. The initial three-year lease was for $3.22 million total.
New equipment will be paid for out of the district’s capital outlay funds, and the district plans to finance the approximate $4.2 million lease over three years. It includes 3,800 MacBook Air laptops and some additional support software.
The item was part of the board’s consent agenda — a list routinely approved in one motion unless a board member or the superintendent pulls an item for discussion. Board members voted 7-0 to approve all items at once Monday.
GR Gordon-Ross, board vice president, during board commentary said this version of MacBook is less prone to breakage than the version the district last used before switching to iPads. He also said including Apple support in the contract this time will mitigate extra costs.
“A lot of basic repair and maintenance that previously we were paying for out of the general fund is covered in the lease,” Gordon-Ross said. “And so a lot of those expenses we won’t see.”
If our local journalism matters to you, please help us keep doing this work.
Don’t miss a beat … Click here to sign up for our email newsletters
Click here to learn more about our newsletters first
Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
Latest Lawrence news:
Maya Hodison/Lawrence Times
