<p><a href=“Maine South High School”>Maine South High School;
<p>Heard about this on Gawker, and looked around to see if it was legit. Frankly, I’m stunned. Nothing like this where we live.</p>
<p>Is this a thing these days in some places?</p>
<p>Funny all the free/reduced priced lunch stuff on the same form mentioning $300 computers. There should be a box on the form to check if student can’t afford computer. If all the students can’t have a computer for school courses they shouldn’t be allowed in class.</p>
<p>apparently the price is waived for free lunch students. but everyone is required to buy the Chromebook, whether or not they own another tablet or laptop.</p>
<p>It looks like this school is ahead of the curve. I know a number of schools are moving to the Chromebook for the reasons they cite. These kids will have a much easier time in college and in the digital world.</p>
<p>[News</a> Chromebooks will reduce cost, create opportunities - Maine Township High School District 207 South](<a href=“Maine South High School”>Maine South High School)</p>
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<p>My son’s school does everything on the iPad. Greatest thing for a slob like my son.</p>
<p>However, it is a private school, and I wouln’t be comfortable requiring that in a public school because it is expensive, the case is expensive, the insurance is expensive. Not everyone could afford all that.</p>
<p>Our state has always required textbook rental for public school students. It’s not cheap either–$175-200 per student. A year ago, the superintendent pushed through every student having an iPad. IMO, it’s been a huge waste of time and money. </p>
<p>He too gave the “save parents money” routine. Then charged the regular textbook fee and added on a big “technology” fee. Parents were also required to sign a waiver stating if <em>anything</em> happened to the iPad, including theft or vandalism by another student, the parent would be responsible for the cost. We are also now required to buy their insurance because too many were broken.</p>
<p>Some good teachers use the iPad to supplement their lessons. Far too many, most, and especially the young ones, use the iPad as a babysitter. The school had weak academics and discipline anyway, and now things are much worse. After a year, the administration is “surprised” to learn how many kids mess around with a computer and the ensuing discipline issues. /smacks head/</p>
<p>Hey, there’s a cool ap for that! So what we spend 4 days figuring out how to access the ap, while half the class plays games, surfs the net, listens to music, and IMs people? Oh the horrors of having to carry a textbook–it’s so heavy. Argggg.</p>
<p>I am shocked that they have such a policy already for such young students, especially in a public school. I went to a well-off public school in Texas and they were only just starting to purchase classroom sets of tablets and new laptops. </p>
<p>I now go to Babson College where everyone is given a “free” (paid for by tuition) new lenovo laptop. While it is a little concerning having a school require such purchases, if done well it can really have a dramatic impact on how much work can get done, the more interactive nature of homework assignments, and definitely makes teachers’ lives a lot better.</p>
<p>My son’s school does an absolutely amazing job with the iPad, I can’t say enough good things about how they work with it, but it is one school, a very small one, and it has an extremely wealthy, homogeneous population. My other kids went to diverse, exciting public schools with thousands of kids and I couldn’t see how it would work in that seting.</p>
<p>Isn’t it illegal to require any public school student to pay for anything? Maybe that’s just a Michigan thing but it’s what we were taught from a very young age.</p>
<p>Not here. I’ve complained about this before, but graduation dues are in the range of $600 per year and any student not receiving free lunch has to pay for IB and AP tests. Also, some books and gym uniforms. However, I have always believed that the graduation dues could be offset by the PTA in cases of extreme need.</p>
<p>At our public high school, tablets (meaning iPads and such) or laptops are not required but they are “encouraged.”</p>
<p>I have also not understood why, at all levels of our children’s school years, the parents associations at the time have found it necessary to “donate” items to the various schools which should have been supplied by the school district.</p>
<p>Our annual school district budget averages out to $14,000 per student. You would think with that much money they could afford to provide basic student and school equipment.</p>
<p>Never knew kids who go to public schools have to pay for their text books. Even though my son went to a private school, my school district was required to provide him with the text books he needed.</p>
<p>The Chromebook has a keyboard so it is much more functional than a tablet. Students write papers, etc. that are stored on the cloud. That means they can’t loose it unless they try really hard to do so. It also means documents are not stored on a hard drive that can crash or be erased accidentally. </p>
<p>Schools make parents pay for all sorts of things, vaccinations before being admitted to school, lunches, activity fees, book fees, etc. Using the Chromebook actually lowers the costs to students and provides them with better learning tools. Requiring every child to have one is smart. Otherwise the school would have students who were left out and would fall behind. </p>
<p>I wish every school district did this. We would have a lot smarter children in our country.</p>
<p>never heard of textbook payments or rentals before. I’m assuming it’s not legal in NJ. </p>
<p>There are other fees this school requires, too. This does not happen here–not when my kids were in school and not now (checked with H who teaches in the town.)</p>
<p>For me, it’s not whether it’s Chromebook or iPad or whatever the flavor of the month is. It’s the mandatoriness and the fees that are surprising.</p>
<p>I’m just flabbergasted.</p>
<p>I have always been bothered by the garland. Sometimes it is very hard for families to come up with just the absolute basics, never mind the extras.</p>
<p>Three points:</p>
<p>Few people have raised issues about how Apple has bribed, cajoled, pushed its way in gaining a quasi monopoly in public education. The only difference is that corruption and waste are condoned as long as parents do no get a DIRECT bill.</p>
<p>Any measure that reduces the same waste in academic publishing should be good. Just as Apple, this is an industry that succeeds via bribing and abusing the stupidity of the buyers.</p>
<p>Time has come to transform the funding of public education and adopt a mean-based system that incrementally increases the funding by parents based on the attendance of their children. A FAFSA from college down to K-12 should work.</p>
<p>I think in Michigan they can’t “require” it but they can “request” it as much as they want. As long as they aren’t saying it is mandatory they can ask. My kids usually come home with “optional” lists of school supplies a page long every year.</p>
<p>Xiggi^^Totally agree with the first two, disagree on the last. (but you’d already know that, 
)</p>
<p>Move–here also. (though I never heard of any kind of electronics suggested beyond a calculator in advanced math classes.)</p>
<p>Also, anything that reduces the PILES of paper my kids bring home every week I would be all for. I can’t believe the stacks of papers that they have sometimes, much of it busy work. It seems like that would be worth the price of the computers for the school districts in itself. I don’t see our public high schools going to a system like that any time soon though.</p>