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Thursday, April 19, 2007
Book Finally Closed On School Laptop Debacle
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A special grand jury looking into Cobb County School District’s failed contract with Apple Computer to supply some 63,000 take-home laptops to students and teachers has concluded that, despite allegations of corruption, there was no criminal wrongdoing.
The 162-page report, released this morning after 17 months of study, found that neither former Superintendent Joe Redden nor his staff improperly favored Apple in their quest to implement the $100 million “Power To Learn” initiative.
But the 25 members of the jury didn’t let Georgia’s second-largest school system off the hook entirely. In fact, they gave a pretty scathing review of Cobb’s procurement process and told officials they should consider a serious review of their policies.
“Failures to follow CCSD procedures, insufficient checks and balances, ambiguous rules, shortcuts, time pressures and hasty or poor thinking all converged in a perfect storm to create an end result that raised questions and controversy,” the report states in part. “As a result, careers and reputations (including CCSD’s) … were damaged….”
The laptop case was a bizarre one, to be sure. Cobb wound up in court over other legal issues surrounding the plan and Redden ultimately resigned. But did it really damage the system’s reputation?
I mean, Cobb still is home to some of the state’s highest achieving campuses, isn’t it?
