Free iBook Program May Be in Jeopardy

The largest laptop program in the history of public education may be in jeopardy after a county commissioner filed suit to stop the school district from distributing more Apple iBooks. Former Cobb County, Georgia Commissioner Butch Thompson is accusing the local school district of misusing taxpayer money.

He also claims that voters were not properly informed that a new 1 percent sales tax was to be instituted in order to help start the program. Voters had approved the tax back in 2003.

"I didn't vote for laptops for every student in the county, and I don't think anyone else did," Thompson said. "In essence, they took funds designated for one purpose and used it for something else."

Officials said back in 2003 that the new tax would be used to replace aging and obsolete workstations. However, the lawsuit says that nowhere in the proposal to voters was language that suggested that school officials planned to give a laptop to every student from grades six through 12.

But the program has already started; some of Cobb County's 7,100 teachers had begun to receive iBooks last week.

The school system planned to raise $70 million through the sales tax program, with an annual cost to taxpayers running about $20 million. The sales tax would expire in 2008. The first phase of the program will cost the school district $25 million. And if the whole program is approved by the school board, nearly 63,000 iBooks could be given to teachers and students at the program's completion.

Members of the Cobb County school board defended the free iBook program and said that the 2003 tax was the second in a row that voters had passed to improve the area's schools. "We have always been conservative, on-time and under budget with everything we've done," School board Chairwoman Kathie Johnstone said.