In districts, 1-to-1 equals new funding strategies

Before 4,450 MacBook Airs were distributed to students, before teachers were equipped and trained on their own devices, before test scores increased and the dropout rate decreased, the Mooresville Graded School District’s digital conversion started with a hard look at finances—one result of which was the elimination of more than 35 teaching positions.

Officials in the North Carolina school district, which ranked almost last in the state in per-student spending, knew rolling laptops out to all students in grades three through 12 would be an expensive undertaking. They knew the initial outlay would be followed by maintenance, professional development, and replacement costs. And they knew that finding the right funding formula would require changing the status quo. It would also require sacrifice.

“We took a global look at the budget as a whole and started by asking what we could abandon,” said Terry Haas, the district’s chief financial officer. “What were we doing just because we had always done it and what things could we repurpose?”

Among the items deemed unnecessary to buy again in the future: computer labs, textbooks, maps, globes, calculators, and encyclopedias—all available in electronic form through the laptops. The district also cut 65 jobs, including 37 teachers.

Instead of buying the laptops—and ending up stuck with obsolete models in a few years—Mooresville schools opted for a lease-purchase agreement that allows the district to lease the MacBook Airs for $215 a year, or about $1 million, and resell them after two to three years of use, Haas says. Parents pay an annual $50 technology usage fee that helps pay for repair. The fee is waived for families who cannot afford it.

But the key to the funding for Mooresville’s program was the decision to build the costs into the district’s $46 million budget as a permanent line item.

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