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School May Turn Down $43K In Free Macs

Posted by timothy on from the hobgoblin-of-little-minds dept.

Longfeather writes "Tukwila, Washington's cash-strapped Foster High School may have to turn down US$43,000 worth of free Macs because of a PC-only IT policy already in place. Read here(1) and here(2)." Surely some school would be willing to bend (or rethink) policy rather than turn away new computers.

1 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. It's not that they don't already have Macs by dafz1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    According to the article, there are already Macs in the school's library and graphics classrooms. Also, teachers can have Macs on their desk. This school is part of a re-organization to have three academies geared toward student interests. Expand their minds, while making them use one OS? Sure.

    This gets back to a number of old (mostly bad and uninformed) arguments. Total cost of ownership, applicability of OS in the "real world", etc. I'm sure that all of the IT staff have MCSE certifications, and with that, the attitude that "Macs suck". Which was why the policy was created in the first place.

    The reality is money is not getting spent on education. If it is to be believed(and I doubt it), the Gates Foundation grant doesn't specify what kind of computers are required. I applaud anyone, whether I agree with how they run their business or not, that donates large sums of money or computers to schools.

    Schools shouldn't be stupid and turn away new computers, even because of some short-sighted IT proposal.