Monday night, the Horry County Board of education voted against distributing digital tablets to all elementary school classes like they had originally planned.
Dozens of elementary school principals, teachers, and parents sat in silence as the board announced they would only distribute the tablets to fifth grade students next year.
“I think it’s unfortunate for our third and fourth grade teachers and our students and I hope that it stays before the board until next year,” said Jane Pearce.
Pearce, a mother of two students, spoke to the board and requested it distribute tablets to all classes.
She says the devices level the playing field for all students as well as helps the learning process.
Several board members agree the devices should go out despite the board’s concerns.
“We may fear the struggle we may deal with from an IT standpoint; there’s just way too much good we can do for our kids,” said Board Member, John Poston.
“To put this off is not the way to go,” said Board Member, Jeffrey Garland. “We have a commitment for next year from Dell and Apple to provide support to help with us with this rollout and any issues that may come up,” he added.
However Board Chairman, Joe Defeo, said regardless of technical support from Apple and Dell he is not willing to make an investment the district is not ready for.
“I’m against not doing it right and there have been too many problems and too many mistakes to do it,” he said.
Defeo says the original timeline to distribute the tablets over three years is too quick.
With issues the district has seen with tablets, like students not having their device for up to 30 days he says much more work is needed before he feels comfortable distributing to all elementary school classes.
“We haven’t been able to keep up with what’s going on in the schools so therefore I say lets master it,” said Defeo.
Defeo says as well as practical concerns, the cost exceeded what the board expected.
He says the operation of the tablets, including repairs and IT work is more than a million dollars more than what the board was originally told.