October 9, 2013 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 7 FLOW Area Regional trustees approve lease purchase of laptops by Frank J. McMahon The Ramapo Indian Hills Regional High School Dis- trict Board of Education has approved a lease purchase agreement with Apple, Inc. for 2,500 MacBook Air 13- inch laptop computers and 180 iPads with related equip- ment for use by all district students. The resolution states that the board determined that it is necessary and advisable to acquire personal comput- ers, servers, and network equipment to implement the district’s 1:1 Wireless Laptop Initiative Program, and the purchase is being made through a contract with the Western States Contracting Alliance and the State of New Jersey. Apple, Inc. offered the lease purchase in the annual amount of $698,069 with zero percent financing for a term of four years, totaling $2,792,277 less a discount of $100,120 for a total contract sum of $2,692,158. Frank Ceurvels, the school business administrator, has documented that these computers best meet the needs of the district, but the payments under the lease purchase agreement will be subject to the annual appropriation of funds sufficient to meet the required payments. Ceurvels advised that the district had budgeted $767,000 for this lease purchase, and Apple’s zero inter- est offer amounts to a savings of about $100,000. He recently advised the school board that the lease purchase agreement had been negotiated over several months and he believes the district received very favor- able terms. According to Ceurvels, the district is paying is 11 percent less than educational pricing, and less than retail pricing, so a laptop that would cost a private consumer $999 is costing the school district $809 or $190 less than the average consumer would have to pay. In addition, Ceurvels pointed out that the agreement includes on-site support and services by Apple to set up and image each computer for the district and to build/ crease disk images for the laptops and transfer them into the district’s inventory management system. Apple will provide on-site assistance during the ini- tial days of the rollout of the program, technical assis- tance, and aid in implementing the new program, which is scheduled to begin in January. Ceurvels advised that new laptops were not purchased for the staff because their computers were just upgraded last year, but the cost does include the upgrade of those staff machines. The public was informed of the school district’s pro- gram, the “1:1 Technology Initiative,” at a community information night held in June at Indian Hills High School. At that forum, John Chang, the district’s direc- tor of technology, advised that the district intends to use Apple computers because the district has been using them since 2001 and is familiar with them. In addition, Chang said these computers have been found reliable, easy to support, and not as vulnerable to viruses as other computer systems. Chang explained that every student will be issued a district-owned laptop, and their parents or guardians will be required to pay a yearly insurance premium of $60 to $75. In addition, the students and their parents must attend an orientation program in November or December of this year and sign a new laptop agreement and technology acceptable use contract. The students will be responsible for bringing in their fully-charged laptops every day, Chang said. He added that students must use the district provided e-mail account, and must return the laptops during the summer for maintenance. Chang pointed out that the laptops will have restricted access in compliance with the Children’s Internet Pro- tection Act, a federal law passed by Congress in 2000 to address concerns about children’s access to obscene and harmful content available via the Internet. According to Beverly Mackay, who was the district’s interim superintendent of schools at the time of the forum, district teachers were scheduled to receive pro- fessional development training in the use of the comput- ers during the summer and were due to spend 21 hours in training that would be tiered to the various needs of the teachers. That training, according to MacKay, will be done outside the teachers’ contractual day, but they may be released from about three hours of class time.