Former Cobb County commissioner Butch Thompson file a lawsuit before this week to stop in its tracks a programme that would put 1000 of Apple iBooks in the hired man of Georgia schoolkids and teachers . At take is how the monetary resource for the program have been allocate and how elector were inform .
The iBook letting plan was sanction by the Cobb County School District early last calendar month . The first phase of the “ Power to Learn ” program puts 17,000 iBooks in the hands of teachers across the territory and at four “ demonstration site ” high schools . The rollout to teacher has already begun .
If the plan succeeds , 63,000 iBooks could in the end detect their way into the hand of Cobb County schoolkids . That would make Cobb County ’s “ Power to discover ” program the largest ever one - to - one computing gadget see enterprisingness , according to Apple .
Cobb County School District PR manager Jay Dillon explained to MacCentral that the money for the program was taken a tax taxation plan in Georgia call Special Purpose Location Option sale Tax , or SPLOST . The land of Georgia allows individual counties like Cobb to levy an extra cut-rate sale tax of up to two per centum to fund capital improvement in the county , including the purchase of new computer systems .
Thompson claims that the speech of a taxation nullification overhaul in 2003 that helped fund the program was not specific enough to fully inform voter who sanction the metre . schoolhouse officials at the meter purportedly promised to substitute obsolete computer workstations , but Thompson contend that it was n’t spell out to elector that the money would be used to lease laptops .
“ I did n’t vote for laptop for every student in the county , and I do n’t remember anyone else did . In essence , they take investment company delegate for one purpose and used it for something else , ” Thompson told theAssociated Press .
