L.A. School District iPad Program Ends Amid FBI Suspicions
L.A. school district officials have turned over twenty boxes of documents pertaining to its troubled iPad project in response to a federal grand jury’s subpoena, the LA Times reports.
What was intended to be a $1.3 billion project to equip every student in the district with an iPad running Pearson education software has been plagued with issues since the beginning. The Feds are investigating ties between then-superintendent John Deasy and Pearson and Apple executives at the time of the deal.
On top of that, the project suffered from technical difficulties, including students who deleted the security filter so they could play games and browse the Internet freely, and teachers who said they were ill-prepared regarding the devices. Already, some teachers in the district have willingly opted out of the program.
See also: Latest Bad Sign For Tablets: Chromebooks Outship iPads In Schools
The FBI has seized 20 boxes of documents from the district related to the project, and is looking into records from before and after the bidding process to discover if the odds were stacked in favor of Deasy’s connections, Pearson and Apple, winning the bidding war over competitors like Microsoft. Deasy told the LA Times Tuesday that he didn't know anything about the subpoena and that law enforcement had not contacted him.
If the FBI discovers the kind of corruption it suspects, everyone will lose. The school district had put aside $800 million for new personnel related to the project, and these people will no longer be hired. Apple will lose the $500 million it was set to earn from the iPad revenue (not that it will notice). Most importantly, there’s the students and teachers that were set to gain a new technology curriculum from the project. Fortunately, the remaining 27 schools in the project that have not received iPads can opt for Chromebooks instead.
Photo by Brad Flickinger
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