AJC.com > Blogs > Get Schooled > Archives > 2007 > April > 19 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USBook 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?
Comments
By cobbparentfortoolong
April 19, 2007 12:10 PM | Link to this
Yes, the system’s reputation has been seriously damaged. and rightly so.
Yes, “Cobb still is home to some of the state’s highest achieving campuses.” That’s because those campuses are located in areas with some of the state’s highest family income/education demographics — which everyone knows equates to high test scores.
By Ernest
April 19, 2007 12:36 PM | Link to this
I think this situation temporarily damaged Cobb’s reputation. In the short term, stakeholders will remind others about this when new initiatives are presented. Most citizens have short memories and except by opponents during SPLOST referendums, many will forget this.
The good thing is SPLOST Capital Improvement Plans will get greater scrutiny (as they should) and stakeholders will hold their school systems to it. Attempts to be ‘less than transparent’ will hurt renewal attempts.
By faye
April 19, 2007 1:33 PM | Link to this
As a Cobb parent, equally, if not more damaging, is the fact that the system is in Needs Improvement because of NCLB. Yet, it is accedited and gets good reviews in other areas. It has SAT scores higher than the national average. Go figure.
We have experienced a major demographic shift - of 100,000 kids, fifty thousand are white, 30,000 black, 15,000 Hispanic, about 5,000 Asian, and the rest a blend of Native American and mixed heritage. I don’t know that we’ve caught up.
There is hope though - we elected three new board members, and they have gotten rid of the Carver Governance model (which is partially to blame for Redden’s control).
We’ll see.
By V for Vendetta
April 19, 2007 2:04 PM | Link to this
I personally wish it were MORE damaging to Cobb’s reputation. For too long counties like Cobb and Gwinnett have gotten by on their reputations, when under the surface all kinda of underhanded stuff was going on. These two counties need to face the music. You can’t pull the wool over the people’s eyes forever. Sooner or later, you have to own up. Cobb has had to own up for one of its blunders, I wonder when that other powerhouse county (cough, Gwinnett, cough) will have to do the same?
By Gino
April 19, 2007 2:07 PM | Link to this
Redden got off easy—-sweetheart, inside deals with his buddies—-they all got rich, the Cobb County taxpayers got hosed.
By Michael
April 19, 2007 2:40 PM | Link to this
You all do know how Grand Jury works, right? The DA says indict, they indict. The DA says don’t indict, they don’t indict.
By SET
April 19, 2007 3:13 PM | Link to this
Michael, you must be referring to the Criminal Grand Jury.
In CA there are normally 2 sets of grand Juries with different members. The Civil Grand Jury is the “watchdog of government”. They operate outside of the DA, or in spite of the DA.
They take complaints from the public and investigate whatever they want to - from deaths in custody, to the county hospital operations, to allegations of corruption in School Districts or whatever. They physically inspect the jail each year. They can call witnesses as they please and the sheriff will go serve the witnesses and bring them in. They issue annual reports about what they find. Those reports are public and can lead to bad press, firings, contested elections, or criminal investigations.
The Civil Grand Jury is only controlled by the Presiding Judge of Superior Court who in CA can herself be recalled at anytime by the electorate and must stand for election as a judge every so many years.
For continuity there are several holdover members every year into the next year. Each Year’s Civil Grand Jury normally leaves recommendations to the next year’s CGJ about who to investigate next.
They really do intimidate State and Local Government Agencies. The members are appointed each year by the County Judges and are usually the most educated and prominent retired people in the area. Nobody else can afford to serve.
By JustMe
April 19, 2007 4:08 PM | Link to this
Sorry, but anyone that thinks using tax dollars to provide laptops to children is a good idea should be put in jail.
Yes, money should be used for technology. Yes, put desktop computers in schools. But, to give little Johnny a laptop to play kickball with is plain stupid.
Did anyone ask a large company such as Coca-Cola the cost of simply maintaining this type of equipment? It is very large amount - and that is for responsible adults using it. Imagine the Cobb County budget requirement if all of the little kids got laptops! Ouch!!
By thomas
April 19, 2007 6:22 PM | Link to this
Who cares about this laptop debacle? It was over with two years ago.
What we need to talk about is the other issues plaguing our schools. What about the race problem? There is a lot of racial strife and tension in a lot of non-homogenous schools. Whites vs blacks, blacks vs whites, whites vs hispanics, hispanics vs blacks, blacks vs hispanics.
I am dealing with issues like that in my own classroom. It’s actually a schoolwide/communitywide problem. I am dealing with racial issues in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!!!!!!!! I can’t go into details, but to put it succinctly, this is the most ridculous stuff I have ever heard of. 8, 9, 10, and 11 year olds harboring racial prejudice. I’m sure it’s all over the nation. It is disrupting our classrooms.
By Michael
April 20, 2007 8:33 AM | Link to this
Um, SET, Cobb County is in GA, not CA, there is one Grand Jury and the issue was they did not issue indictments. So take you CA lecture and shove it.
By KA
April 20, 2007 8:40 AM | Link to this
Michael, Get lost. We don’t want your rudeness here.
By WFC
April 20, 2007 10:15 AM | Link to this
The underlying issue here is the educational value of computers and the internet. There is without doubt great potential learning value in these tools. However, the key is GUIDANCE and SUPERVISION. Simply distributing machines to students is of limited value and may actually hurt. Deluding parents into thinking that technology alone can help their children is criminal in and of itself.
I’m old enough to remember when television was going to “change the face” of education. It didn’t. And computers won’t either. The tremendous weakness of the internet is lack of quality control. Students (most of them) don’t know garbage when they see it. They need guidance from a highly-skilled teacher.
Throwing computer technology at students simply won’t work.
By Lee
April 20, 2007 10:28 AM | Link to this
SEVENTEEN months to investigate? That seems about 15 months too long to me - especially for a Grand Jury with subpoena powers.
By Lee
April 20, 2007 12:02 PM | Link to this
OK, this is unrelated to the Cobb computer scandal, but it does illustrate the absolute insanity pervasive in our schools today.
Dateline April 19, 2007. Police investigate ham incident at school. LEWISTON, Maine — Police are investigating as a possible hate crime an incident in which a ham steak was placed in a bag on a lunch table where a group of Somali students were sitting. Such an incident would be offensive to Somalis, who are Muslims and consider pork unclean. A Lewiston Middle School student was suspended after the incident, which happened April 11. Superintendent Leon Levesque said the incident is being treated seriously and police are investigating. The center for the Prevention of Hate Violence is working with the school to devise a response plan.
So now a ham sandwich is a hate crime. Insensitive? Yes. Hate crime? No way. Suspend a student? Give me a break.
If my memory serves me, I read an article several months back where Maine had enacted some very liberal welfare benefits and the locals were complaining about the influx of Somalians. Sound familiar?
Personally, I think we’re about one severe recession away from a full blown race war in this country.
By >SM<
April 20, 2007 6:36 PM | Link to this
Damaged reputation? Are you kidding? Only old people and self imposed town criers ever opposed this. Everyone in Cobb who has kids wanted this. be happy, “pencils and paper” won so now put aside your personal grudges because you were denied some permit or something and move on to your next community crusade.
BTW… CobbParent42long is correct about the economic and demographics in relation to good test scores. That is why I moved here. You have to have money to even think about giving laptops to students. In our former southern part of ATL county they were to busy buying new trailers for crappy teachers and uninvolved parents to even think so cutting edge as laptops.
By catlady
April 23, 2007 5:09 PM | Link to this
This always sounded like the Transactional Analysis game “Let’s Pull a Fast One on Joey” to me.