SOUTH PORTLAND – The South Portland City Council got schooled on iPads Monday when more than 120 residents, a large percentage of whom were students, spent more than two hours taking it to task for denying a school department proposal to outfit every student in grades 7-12 with one of the popular tablet devices.
Although the school board voted unanimously to back the iPad as South Portland’s choice among five possible leases offered under the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, it fell to the City Council to actually appropriate $784,672 from the school department’s technology reserve fund, as requested. That motion failed at the June 3 council meeting due to a tie vote, 3-3.
“I was shocked, dismayed and a little taken aback,” said Superintendent Suzanne Godin, describing her reaction to the vote.
Monday’s demonstration was preceded by a weeklong barrage of similar sentiments sent to all seven councilors. Mayor Tom Blake reported getting nearly 100 emails alone, while Councilor Michael Pock reported getting three handwritten letters in the mail, purportedly in response to his comment when voting against supplying a computer to every student that “nobody knows how to write anymore.”
However, tension was broken early in the evening when Councilor Gerard Jalbert, who along with Pock and Councilor Melissa Linscott voted against the iPad purchase, said he will move for reconsideration at the June 17 council meeting.
Councilor Alan Livingston, absent from the June 3 meeting to attend graduation ceremonies at Cheverus, where he teaches, expressed some concern that the iPad was the best choice for students. However, he telegraphed that he does “look forward to supporting technology” at the June 17 meeting.
With Linscott unable to attend that session, approval of the iPad purchase seems assured on the second try, even if Pock and Jalbert maintain their original positions.
“You have a do-over with an earth-shattering consequence,” said Summit Street resident Jeff Selser, who highlighted the importance of technology in today’s world by quoting the rollout dates of several new inventions in the past decade – dates he looked up on his iPhone while standing in line to speak.
Most of the speakers were students, from sixth-graders to recently graduated seniors. All told stories of how they use their laptop on a daily basis in school. None copped to the opinion Blake said they expressed in emails to him, that they actually prefer laptops to iPads for schoolwork, but all said some form of computer is a vital part of their educational experience.
Some also said the one-to-one computing model, in which each student has his or her own device, is a great equalizer.
“I can’t even imagine what my high school career would have looked like if I hadn’t had a one-to-one laptop available to me,” said Iris SanGiovanni, who got her diploma this past Sunday. “I live in Section 8 housing and my family doesn’t have the means to get a home computer, let alone a laptop for me and my sister, who is a sophomore.
“I will be attending the University of Southern Maine in the fall and I just want you to know that by investing in this program you are investing not only in my future by the future of generations to come,” said SanGiovanni.
A common theme of the evening was the summation that much of the problem, as happens seemingly every year during budget season, is the disconnect between the School Board and the City Council.
“It seems to me if you guys were having coffee once a week, or maybe a pajama party or something, if you talked to each other a little bit better than you do right now, we wouldn’t be here tonight,” said Day Street resident Ross Little.
Still, longtime science teacher Ralph Newell said there has always been a measure of technophobia when it comes to spending on education.
“I’m just astounded at the irony,” he said. “I started teaching here 47 years ago and that year there was an argument over one-to-one use of students and slide rules.
“These devices enable us to do things that just a few years ago we couldn’t do,” said Newell, urging the council to reconsider its vote for the iPads, called by many in the crowd the “best and cheapest” option from among five offered by the state.
On April 29, the Maine Department of Education announced that it has chosen the HP ProBook 4440 running Windows 8 as the computer it would supply to all students in grades 7-8 as part of the new MLTI initiative lease. Those machines cost the state $254.86 each, plus a “per seat” fee of $30.91 for networking installation, maintenance and service.
Gov. Paul LePage reportedly chose the HP laptop – even though the 32-gigabyte iPad offered by Apple was both less expensive and more highly regarded by a committee convened to rank the five proposals made to supply computers to Maine schools for the next four years – because Windows devices are thought to be more prevalent in the workplace. Still, the iPad was scored 93 out of 100 points by the study committee, which gave the HP a 79.
The school department’s technology director, Andrew Wallace, said that of 400 iPads purchased by the school department since 2011 as a pilot program to this year’s proposed purchase, only four have been damaged, and adults broke two of those.
Just an important, he said, because the iPad at, $217 each plus a $49 networking fee, is cheaper than the state’s choice, South Portland can get an iPad for all grade 7-8 students and grade 7-12 teachers at no charge. School districts that choose one of the other options, all ranked lower than the iPad by the study committee, must pay the difference between its choice and the HP machine.
Schools also can buy computers at the state price for students outside grades 7-9. South Portland had intended to buy 860 iPads for students in grades 7-12, plus another 44 for educational technicians in the district.
At a savings of $19.77 per machine, South Portland expected to save $17,674.38 by choosing the iPad tablet over the HP laptop.
Pock said he had “got quite an education” in the past week, becoming proficient at last in use of his own city-supplied iPad based in large part on the volume of emails to which he had to reply. He seemed almost repentant, saying that apart from questioning the amount of money to be spent on the Pads, and where those funds come from, “I have no problem with purchasing them.”
Linscott, however, was less sanguine, continuing to voice reservations about the limited functionality of iPads, compared to laptops, as well as financial concerns.
“It’s our job as councilors to ask these questions,” she said.
Colchester Drive resident Al DiMillo, a columnist for The Current and the only person to speak against the iPads of nearly 50 who took the podium, said he plans to submit a legal opinion “at 3 p.m. on Monday” demonstrating that South Portland’s practice of shuffling surplus money into reserve accounts and then spending that money on things other than the items for which it was originally appropriated, is a violation of both the city charter and Maine statutes.
However, Godin presented an opinion from the law firm DrummondWoodsum clearing the practice. DiMillo, however, was clearly unimpressed with the competing legal opinion.
“Next week, if you go through with this, there will be a lawsuit,” he said.
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