CCSD's Chump Change: $2.1 Million iPads

• Sorry to be repetitive, but something is rotten in the state of Denmark, as Hamlet once noted.


• Shakespeare's version involved sleeping with the enemy, but in the case of the Charleston County Schools District, "rotten" describes capital funding streams that leave Michael Bobby, CCSD's financial officer asking, "How can I get this $2.1 million off my hands and into the hands of my contractors without the taxpayers' raising questions about waste when teachers are being furloughed and staff reduced?"


• Even Brian Hicks notes the tin ear of the CCSD Board of Trustees in his Wednesday column: "While they are facing a massive budget shortfall." "When the academic value of these gadgets has yet to be proven."


• Two Wednesday Letters to the Editor also sum up the frustrations of the public, noting that "we played this game a few years ago with SmartBoards" and before that with computers in every classroom.


• Where is the evidence that technology has advanced achievement?


• Oh, sorry, I forgot. School districts don't worry about evidence; they go with the trends. They experiment on children. How many "new math" victims still have problems with basic computation? How many high school students can figure a percentage without whipping out a calculator?


• It seems that CCSD will have so much surplus capital from its new one-percent sales tax that saving this $2.1 million for future projects just doesn't make sense.


• That's chump change. Think about it--what else could be done with $2 million in CCSD?