School May Turn Down $43K In Free Macs

Longfeather writes "Tukwila, Washington's cash-strapped Foster High School may have to turn down US$43,000 worth of free Macs because of a PC-only IT policy already in place. Read here(1) and here(2)." Surely some school would be willing to bend (or rethink) policy rather than turn away new computers.

Another deal with the Devil goes bad

I foresee that, as a result of this brilliant strategy, many of the parents might move their kids to other schools, and this story will add to the long list of people who signed a deal with the Devil and ended up pretty badly.

(Hint: as the article says, 2 years ago the school won a $427.000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Sure, this is totally unrelated and I believe it)

The fun part is that it says the refusal is due to the school's policy of only having Windows PCs in order to keep maintenance costs and staff down. Too bad they already have many Macs around.

I hope Apple makes this story very, very public

Re:Another deal with the Devil goes bad

I did a study at my university because the Science department had to eliminate a lab. We had two Windows PC labs and a Mac lab. Part of this study was to find TCO for each lab. In short we found that the Macs were significantly cheaper in the long run. This was for a couple of reasons (there were more but these were the most significant:
1. Longer lifespan for both hardware and software for Macs
2. Administration costs were lower (hours of tech needed for each lab
3. Licensing was cheaper

We found that once we purchased the Macs the actual cost to maintain the Mac lab was almost nothing. A single tech could take care of the unix servers and the mac lab while each of the other labs needed two techs a piece.

They got rid of a PC lab.

Re:Another deal with the Devil goes bad

High school students are going to be a LOT tougher on equipment than students at university, so in terms of hardware longevity a comparison between the two is invalid on its face.

I disagree. University computers take a lot of wear and tear, if only due to 24x7 high-volume use. It isn't uncommon in a lab of 100 computers to have three or four stations out of order for various reasons.

...a university is necessarily better funded than a high school...

True. My University's labs of Sun workstations was much nicer than my high school's lab of 486s.

...I suspect that they would eliminate the Mac lab...

It depends. I would expect that the science students would favor Macs, because they are easier, more elegant, and do have a good selection of scientific software. The business school, being mostly populated by Excel-addicts and Bill Gates groupies, would probably keep the PC lab.

If UNIX or Linux were in the mix, the science students might gravitate toward them. Writing scientific software under UNIX is dreamy.

Re:Another deal with the Devil goes bad

I was going to reply but you hit the nail on the head. There are a couple of things I would like to add.

High school students are going to be a LOT tougher on equipment than students at university, so in terms of hardware longevity a comparison between the two is invalid on its face.

Even if they are tougher the comparison is still valid. If two people beat equipment the same way the poorer equipment is still going to fail first. That is the reason we saw 2 year turnover for our PCs and 6 year turnover on the Macs. We still have a Mac from 1984 running as a server to collect weather data from accross the state. It hasn't been rebooted since the last tech took over. That was two years ago. Another reason is that Apple works hard to make sure their software is backward compatible. We could run Macs for 6 years because the software would work seamlessly with the newest Macs.

There is talk of another round of budget crunching and we may have to merge the two labs. There isn't enough space for all the computers and the decision has already been made to get rid of the extra PCs and keep all the Macs. First because they are so much cheaper in the long run and second because of such high demand from both the students and the teachers. Not only that but our Xserve and Linux servers play nicely with the Macs and we don't have to worry about a service pack breaking everything with an undocumented change.

Re:Another deal with the Devil goes bad

There isn't enough space for all the computers and the decision has already been made to get rid of the extra PCs and keep all the Macs.

Just a thought: You could get a second-hand Sun SPARCstation 20 or Ultra 1 workstation...just to stir things up a bit. Just seeing that odd-looking beige and purple pizzabox on the corner desk would embed in the students' minds that there really are alternatives out there beyond Microsoft and Apple. Solaris isn't a bad first UNIX, either, and is a good stepping-stone to Linux, especially Red Hat.

Another good option (and probably more feasible) would be putting Linux or NetBSD on a couple of the macs (maybe one of each!).

Re:Another deal with the Devil goes bad

Despite this grant, PCs are STILL cheaper to buy and maintain generally

Cheaper to buy? No, not really. Apple's education programs are second-to-none.

Cheaper to maintain? Uh... how do you get cheaper than ZERO? Every machine Apple sells as part of their education program comes with AppleCare for the life of the machine.

Consider that hiring ONE Mac-savvy tech to add to their IT team would cost almost as much as the value of the grant in ONE year and would certainly exceed it in two.

How about spending the forty-five minutes necessary to make their existing staff Mac-savvy, then?

Re:Another deal with the Devil goes bad

but Schools are charged with preparing students for employment, essentially.

Really. While getting a job is a beneficial effect of going to school, I always kind of thought that the point of going to school was to get an education. Meaning, learning how to think, getting basic skills required to learn more in the future, getting exposure to knowledge outside of their immediate environment. If goal is just to get them into a job and get them on the consumer treadmill, why not just teach them to flip burgers, kick them out and be done with it?

And when these kids get employed, they will most likely be using PCs, regardless of OS.

Um, if it's a PC "regardless of OS", then the most important thing for them to put on this resume you refer to is "A Pentium IV 2GHz biege box with 512M of RAM and a 80G hard drive"?

the student putting MacOS on the "Proficiency" section of his resume is only adding a feather in his cap. A dirty, weather beaten feather. The part that will score the points is where he lists "Microsoft Office".

Doesn't "Microsoft Office" run on MacOS as well?


Using any of the current OS's gives kids general skills needed for dealing with computers. To think that they have to be trained on any particular system is really pretty short sighted. The way you accomplish various goals even changes between versions of Microsoft Office.

To turn down free equipment because of this kind of policy is just asinine. Maybe this is an opportunity for some of the kids (assuming these kids are old enough) to learn how to support different kinds of computers (and add that to their resume) since the school doesn't want to support them.

But, if they are rejected, at least the kids will be exposed to an important concept that will prepare them for employment: corporate policy.

Re:Another deal with the Devil goes bad

A few years ago I was attending school to become a systems analyst. During that time we were all required to lease an IBM ThinkPad and soley use PCs throughout the time in class. We learnt how to program in VB and we were all taught the ins and outs of Office. When the opportunities for co-op came around everyone was competing against each other for jobs. Basically we all had the same skills.

I had only one interview and it basically went like this:

President (of the company): "Have you ever used a Mac?"
Me: "Yes I have, for about 15 years."
President: "Can you start on Monday?"
Me: "Yes I can."

Thanks to the fact that I am extremely proficient on both PCs (Windows or Linux) and Macs I got one of the best co-ops available. It is now my full time employment (I have since graduated) and I would have to be crazy to look for another job.

Just so you know, thanks to a particular "dirty, weather beaten feather" attitude many people have today towards different computing platforms I am the only one of my peers that can travel and the drop of a hat (just got back from Alaska), afford basically anything I want and spend the majority of the time having fun at work instead of trying to sell cellphones at the local mall.

Don't ever think that knowledge, in any respect, is a waste and never advise someone that only their skills on only the most popluar mediums will get them through life.

Variety == Spice

If I was a parent and paid property taxes...

...in that town I would throw a holy fit at them.

Isn't this kind of government waste why god invented Fox News at 10?

Schools are often very very stupid.

I wonder if that school also has a "zero tolerance" policy where bright kids get expelled for having prescription cough syrup in their locker.

Ignorance and FUD

It's Washington state. You surely didn't think that a school superintendent in Washington state would make up his own mind about which computers were easier to maintain, when he has a load of ex-Microsofties and Microsoft-wannabees hanging around waiting for the Call up to Redmond?

If he had standardized on Macs, how much money would he have saved by now?

Re:Ignorance and FUD

It's Washington state.

Actually, it's not just Washington State. It's probably more Foster High School. An ex-girlfriend of mine went there back in the early 90's (she did the community college thing her junior and senior years because the academic programs at FHS were so poor).

Anyway, I showed her the story last night, and she said "Figures. I thought they were morons then, and it seems they haven't changed."

I notice things like this at my school...

All the teachers like to use their iMacs and the occasional powerMac, but the school is now buying Dells, partly because they don't want to switch to OS X, and partly because the retards at my school want to use the same type of computer they have at home.

Variations of this story

I know Slashdot is a hotbed of anti-Microsoft bias, but would you be as outraged by these similar stories?

"School may turn down $43K in free Windows PCs; school has a Linux-only (or Mac-only) policy."

"King County WA school may turn down $43K in free Macs; many parents are Microsoft employees and want to support their employer's products."

Re:Variations of this story

Or perhaps a better way to look at it is if Microsoft was in the business of giving that many computers to educators with "No strings attatched" do you think there would be a anti-microsoft sentiment on /.?

Fscked Up

I work in the seattle school district, they are very PC centric, but they would NEVER do such a thing. I feel sorry for the teacher, it is his class and his kids that will be most affected on this. It is utterly rediculous for bean counters who don't understand technology to make this decision. Their tech support is scared, they don't understand the macs and don't want to. I personally manage a mixed platform school and I by far prefer maintaining the macs, my life is easier because of them. The fact is, there are studies showing that macs have a lower total cost of ownership. Plus, they are just better computers for education, hands down. They would be foolish to turn down this offer. The school board, for its pompous attitude should pony up the money personally to substitute other computers if they continue to pursue such a stupid policy. They are wrong, only the kids will suffer from their bias and incompetence.

I find it funny that...

.. the school would turn down free computers - of any kind - because 'its easier to support only one kind.'

Well guess what, Sherlock - its even easier to support NO computers! Sheesh.

This doesn't make sence

Time to burn some karma

But even without the 30 new Macintosh computers, Foster will have a stash of Macs around the school. A caveat of the technology plan allows teachers to keep their Macs at their desks instead of getting a PC if they wish. In addition, the library and a graphics classroom can keep their Macs

THe article mentions this rediculous policy for PC only systems because of their IT staff and quite frankly it's foolish. IT departments, personel etc. are constantly updating their knowledge to better deal with emerging technologies, right? Why an IT department can't have 3 of those in-DUH-viduals learn about MAC systems?

I've worked in almost half a dozen IT departments and we constantly were exposed to systems that were good for various reasons, and we had to learn. Failure to do so resulted in eventual 'replacement'. That included MAC systems. And it didn't cost the department any extra, for us to learn and actually use with some degree of success these systems. Sure we brought stuff home to learn with (including a handy g4 tower, but that's another story) but isn't that a part of the job??

The ignorant attitude of the administrative personel (probably influenced by the IT depts. unwillingness to learn mac's for some biased reason) shows their competence in the field.

just my 0.02Â - mod on!

Re:Mac or MAC?

And all this time I wasn't completely clear on the way to say (type) MAC vs Mac :D Danke

Okay, I'm a writer. Even worse, I'm a tech writer, and we tend to be rather anal types who are into precision, especially when it comes to punctuation and language. I'm consistent with how I write words like email, website, PoweBook, and other tech jargon. I know that MacUser has an uppercase U in the middle, Macworld does not, NeXT is properly written with a lowercase e, and REALbasic has real in uppercase and BASIC all in lower.

I don't make these rules, I just enforce them.

But there's a small thing going on that really bugs me. I can't figure out how it got started, but it's got to stop, that's all there is to it.

I'm talking about people who write Macintosh as MAC. In all capitals. As though MAC is an acronym (Macintosh Apple Computer?).

You usually tend to see this in relation to PC products. PC is an acronym -- it stands for Personal Computer -- and thus should be capitalized. So something might refer to PC/MAC, indicating compatibility with both systems. Except I'm not sure what a MAC system is: it sure ain't a Macintosh computer.

Look on a DVD with "special DVD-ROM features" and it probably says, "DVD-ROM game will not work on a MAC." Yes, shout stupidity to the world, folks!

Using MAC to refer to Macintosh is a blatant way of revealing your ignorance. It screams that you don't know what you're doing. It's an insult to Mac users and the Mac platform. It's the equivalent of a white person using the N word.

I see PC software companies that finally, after years of pleading, port their product to the Mac. The port itself is half-assed, not using standard Mac operating techniques, and the advertising screams MAC, demonstrating the company's stupidity, and then these guys complain that the Mac market sucks because no one bought their product.

Hello, people. If you took the time to actually learn about the Mac way of doing things, your product would sell. But when you try to shove PC-oriented crap down our throats don't be surprised if we don't open our mouths.

Even worse, MAC can be misleading and confusing. That's because there is a MAC acronym. It stands for Machine Address Code and is a (theoretically) unique number assigned to Ethernet networking cards. Spyware software like Microsoft Windows XP will register the MAC number of the computer you install the software on so that you can't easily move the software to another computer. (Of course if you get a new computer or your networking card dies, you're in trouble.)

Since MAC is commonly used in networking discussions, it can be confusing trying to figure out which use the author intends: are they talking about the Mac platform or the MAC address of a computer? Sometimes you'll find brilliant documents like t his one where both uses are used on the same page (but spelled the same)!

Now I can understand PC users getting mixed up and using MAC for Mac. After all, they don't know better. Companies marketing to the Mac market ought to know better, so I can't forgive them, but I can try to educate them.

However, every now and then I run across a Mac user who writes MAC. This, folks, is unforgivable. This is horrible. This person is perpetuating a crime and massacring a beautiful and elegant product name. This person should know better. This person is not a true follower of the Macintosh Way.

Let me repeat it again. It is Mac, folks. Not MAC. Mac. With an uppercase M and a lower case a and c. Even better, write it out: Macintosh. It's such a wonderful product name. Notice how everyone around the world knows Macintosh even if they aren't privileged to own or use one?

But writing MAC destroys something special. It turns elegant Macintosh into something cheap and ugly, like PC. It's loud and obnoxious, with no character and no charm. Mac is special; MAC is common.

Mac versus MAC is a small thing, but it implies a g

If they don't want 'em...

I'll take 'em! What's wrong with that school? They're free! for cryin' out loud.

Re:If they don't want 'em...

but they will cost more in maintenance and training

I disagree. Any IT person worth his salt can learn to support Macs on a network in about a day, probably just by himself, too. OS X makes networking really easy. There really is no need to map special folders on servers anymore. And besides, Macs are the king of cross-platform integration. Files, sharing, etc. are already taken care of.

As for hardware support, the guts are pretty much the same as PCs. In fact, things like driver issues are not even a consideration. Therefore, switching out drives and PCI cards, etc. is super easy! Actually, the end user or lab advisor probably doesn't need even need an IT person for hardware support. They can do it themselves.

It really boils down to Macs being alien to most people. They are afraid that if they use a Mac or if somebody gives them a Mac, their lives will be severely disrupted. But it won't. And again, the Macs are free, they don't have to keep them, they can trade with another school district, or sell them on eBay or something. If anything, they will save or even make money off of those Macs.

$43,000 worth of macs!

Wow! That's like, what, four whole new Macintosh computers!

(Proud owner of an iBook. Just sayin'.)

Why not trade?

Why don't they accept the Macs and trade them (maybe with another district) for some PCs?

I can understand

This actually makes a little bit of sense. Training is not free. If their IT guys don't know anything about Macs, they're going to need some training to get up to speed. That could easily run into the $10,000+ range. Perhaps that still makes sense in total dollars, but finding the money for it could be difficult -- the $43,000 worth of computers doesn't add any money to their available budget.

Sad IT guys.

If they cannot spend the two days it takes to figure out 99% of how to run a Mac they should be fired. It's not like it's linux or something that is *more* difficult to admin than windows, it's significantly easier.

I am a software engineer and I use DOS, Windows (DOS based and NT based), Solaris (2.6, 7, 8, 9), Linux (2.2, 2.4 kernel based), OS 9 and OS X. There are more similarities between these systems than differences.

I guess the line should be "Schools turn down computers because IT support staff is either too lazy or too stupid to figure out how to use a computer that most 4 year olds can use."

Pathetic really.

In my first job...

.... I handled a reasonably big network of mixed Macs, Solaris and Windows stuff supporting TCP/IP, IPX and Appletalk protocols.

I had no training whatsoever but a big willingness to learn and try things.

They nicknamed me "The Guru" after a few months in the work and kept calling me back after I left for ad-hoc small work.

Anybody that is working under unfavourable conditions but with reasonable management should be able to learn this stuff by themselves if needed.

It's not that they don't already have Macs

According to the article, there are already Macs in the school's library and graphics classrooms. Also, teachers can have Macs on their desk. This school is part of a re-organization to have three academies geared toward student interests. Expand their minds, while making them use one OS? Sure.

This gets back to a number of old (mostly bad and uninformed) arguments. Total cost of ownership, applicability of OS in the "real world", etc. I'm sure that all of the IT staff have MCSE certifications, and with that, the attitude that "Macs suck". Which was why the policy was created in the first place.

The reality is money is not getting spent on education. If it is to be believed(and I doubt it), the Gates Foundation grant doesn't specify what kind of computers are required. I applaud anyone, whether I agree with how they run their business or not, that donates large sums of money or computers to schools.

Schools shouldn't be stupid and turn away new computers, even because of some short-sighted IT proposal.

Break the wintel monopoly. Profit!

This is why schools need to get on the track of Opensourced software. So they could use any hardware, even low-end pentium 1s that people are throwing out everywhere. To a kid, the Linux interface is the same no matter if the underlying hardware is an RS/6000, iMac, Athlon or Dreamcast.

School Districts have interesting problems

I advise my son's elementary school concerning all things that are computer related. School districts are interesting entities - There are so many dynamics running around (and different turf wars) it isn't even funny.

1) Many teachers are computer illiterate. They don't like being shown up by their students who are mostly not computer jocks because they've grown up with them!

2) Software used on campus has to be approved for use by students. This is required because teachers need to be trained on the software, hardware & OS compatibility needs to be assured, and the appropriateness of the application need to be accessed. All this usually costs money.

3) The support staff has to know how to support the hardware and software that you already have. Someone earlier said - IT guys/gals are ALWAYS upgrading their knowledge. You probably don't work for a school district!

4) School districts typically under-estimate the cost of an IT infrastructure by orders of magnitude. They have extremely in-adequate support for staff, software, and hardware support issues. Our district has roughly 50 schools at the K-12 level. Assuming about 100 computers per site you are talking 5000 machines. The district has 5 staff people to support all of this. Further, they don't budget for the up-keep of anything.

These staff are responsible for the district internet infrastructure, the network infrastructure at each school (much of which was put in place by volunteers with no documentation), repair and up-keep of all computers both at each school site and the district office. Just 5 people do all this. Yeah -right.

Let's say you get a donation of 20 Macs - that's great. These machines are going can be expected to have a 10 year life time. There are still Apple II'c in use on my son's campus!

5) Planning a district infrastructure is a nitemare because school budgets are a moving target, you receive donations from all over the board. It's a true patch-work. It's amazing anything works!

So - I'm not suprised they turn something like this down!

Unbelievable

Unfreakin' believable. I'll admit, I've got a slight Mac bias. I've worked on PCs, I've worked on Macs. I know what's easier to fix. I know that studies have shown you need something like one technician for every 50 Macs whereas you need one technician for every 25 PCs. Downtime costs money too...

But the main point...it's just dumb to say "you can only use one computer system". What if they said "you can only use Ticonderoga pencils" even if you got a whole shipment of Bic mechanicals for free? Or who knows how many other goofy scenarios could happen.

Our schools are having a hard enough time as it is. To turn down free materials is just plain idiotic.

One computer, one book

If they were offered $40k worth of free textbooks,
would they request that they were all the same book?
It would certainly be easier to track and catalog
multiple copies of that one book than to have dozens of
new additions to the book tracking system. If one of those
multiple books were lost or destroyed, it's replacement
overhead would be negligible.

Think of the overhead of having to provide different
teachers for the variety of subjects that multiple books
would require! Multiple teachers teaching multiple subjects,
how inefficient and inflexible. If every class in every grade
covered the same subject, thousands would be saved in salaries
and scheduling costs.

The cost-efficient school, it's the wave of the future.

Yes, this is an absurd argument, so is denying young minds
the opportunity for exposure to more than one way to approach
a problem. What makes this whole thing really stupid is that
there's not that much difference between a Mac, a Windows
box, or a Linux system. If the IT staff can't handle learning
something new as part of their job (and this is not that hard),
then they should hire people that are more capable. With the current
job market being what it is, it shouldn't be that difficult to
find people that can handle supporting Macs and Windows and Linux
and still be cost effective. If the school superintendent can't
figure that out, then it's time to replace them as well.

Maybe they can get some extra funding by eliminating student
drug testing and locker searches.

Or, heaven forbid, reducing the budget for sports activities.
How many of these kids will be working with computers,
directly or indirectly, vs. playing for the NFL or NBA?

virtual desktops and such

why don't they just do like my school library did last year and hook the macs up to a citrix ICA system on a win2000 server? Oh, I know why. People like me would hack it.

Bi-lingual

When I went to highschool long ago (2 years ago) we had a computer science teacher/system admin that firmly believed in being bilingual as far as computers were concerned. He himself being a Mac guy obviously knew what their advantages were, how easy they were to use and maintain. But he also knew that not every place in the world supported macs (including our own school board that forced him to resign after they had enough of him proving their purchases of large ammounts of windows boxes to be erronious and far more costly) However, while I was there, I did learn to be bilingual (and picked up his personal prefrence for macs) Now that I am out of school, I work for a web page company that runs totally windows boxes. This was fine, except that I had a far superior titanium laptop at home that was being largely unused while at work. So (with the boss's permission, I got a few help articles together, and brought the TI into work. within 5 mins my computer was connected to the server just like all the other computers, with one major difference. My computer has yet to be nearly as problematic as the rest... kinda funny considering its a windows server...

When ignorance attacks!

There more [operating systems|programming langugages] one knows the more the similar they seem to be.

Any so-called IT professional who only knows one solution and refuses to learn another is a moron and a dangerous liability, because the whole nature of IT is keeping up with change and knowing more than one solution to a problem.

What a horrible example these people are setting for their students!

I don't see how anyone could turn down free Macintosh hardware. It is generally of higher quality than typical PC systems sold to pre-college institutions and requires less maintenance, plus apple has one of the best support services in the industry.

On top of that MacOS X can be used for all the usual user applications, and you get a full-fledged unix development environment built in for classes that can take advantage of it.

Show me someone who willingly turns down systems like this and I'll show you someone who doesn't deserve their job.

School Macs

I'm going here. I'll take a free Mac! And I'll make the switch!

IT scam?

One is tempted to suspect money under the table from Microsoft, but it is probably simpler: The school's IT people don't know anything about UNIX, and are too lazy to learn. But they don't want to lose their jobs, so rather than arguing "We're too lazy to learn another system," they say "It's too expensive to support two different systems." And the school board wasn't technically sophisticated enough to realize that they were being taken.

If they don't want them...

... I'll gladly take the $43,000 off their hands.

Believe me...

...they will only make this mistake one time.

The eventual lynching will occur, and when it does, anyone involved will rue the day.

Money decisions like this are one thing for schools, but having a closed mind in terms of long term resources never goes without attention.

A world full of PC idiots

It's like someone turns down a brand new BMW because he doesn't know how to drive it and refuse to learn the skill.

What's particularly stupid is that the school already has lots of Macs, so they should know Macs are easier to maintain. To deprive the kids of 30 computers rather than changing a senseless policy, he guy is clearly irresponsible and an idiot.

Since when is a Mac not a "PC"?

I mean, doesn't PC stand for personal computer? Is a Mac not a personal computer? Isn't there some other way to label these machines (Wintel boxes, for instance?)

Note that...

If Microsoft gave their OS away, you'd call it"dumping" [slashdot.org]

hypocrisy

and how is this different than the Ballmer going to Europe to pursuade people to use windows?

Oh yeah, in our reaction to it. Boo MS, too bad for apple.

I just wish things would work seemlessly enough for people not to have exclusive contacts of any kind.

Re:hypocrisy

and how is this different than the Ballmer going to Europe to pursuade people to use windows?

RTFA, dummy. This grant is coming from a nonprofit organization, not directly from Apple. Ballmer's "persuasion," on the other hand, comes directly from a Microsoft slush fund.

The $43K grant was presumably open to all qualified schools, with a single winner. The Microsoft slush fund only comes into play when a subsidy is needed to block non-MS products from being purchased somewhere, with a single winner: Microsoft.

~Philly

Armchair quarterbacks...

Lazy sys admins? Stupid administrators? How can everyone jump to those conclusions without knowing anything about the situation?

As an admin at a college, one of my biggest problems is academic departments that put in for grants for stuff, get them, then tell us we have no choice but to support it.

Like, for example, some SGI Fuel station running a 3D projection system we were recently notified we have to support . Did anyone build in tech training into the grant for this? Of course not. Just plug it in, forget about it. What about security patches, what if it won't boot, etc, etc...

Or the famous trick of grants everywhere. Many grants require some sort of "in-kind" donation from the institution. So they calculate up IT staff time and cost, use that as the in-kind donation, then expect IT to absorb it into their existing duties.

Now in my shop, we are over a year behind in many projects and have to be restrictive with new ones launched due to budget cutbacks that have cut IT staff while numbers of equipment needing to support continues to climb. So it's possible that even a little extra effort (if it really is that) would not be possible without slashing support to someone else's project.

Now, I admit, if this is a political issue, it is assine. And, since no one really cares about IT load, I would bet that this is the case.

But please, try to temper the ole "lazy sys admin" criticism. It's most likely not warranted.

dueling grants

If you read the second article you notice that the school district instituted the Wintel-only policy at about the same time they won a $427,000 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant. I'm sure its just a coincidence.

Anyone?

Pay taxes in Washington? King County? Tukwila even? Even bought a Washington lottery ticket? Feel like this is a waste of your money? Write a letter (Tukwila School District 4640 S 144th St. Tukwila, WA 98168), or email or call the Superintendent (Michael Silver, [e-mail], 206.901.8009). Sadly, the actual board members or chairman have no contact info listed, and email to [e-mail] bounces for the Chairman. As a person with a few years of tech support experience for Washington school districts (luckily, not Tukwila), I find it not unsurprising that this would happen, but it disgusts me nontheless.

Why doesn't Microsoft just make "Windows Mac Ed"

Very simple solution. Why doesn't Microsoft just make Windows Mac Edition... sure pc programs wouldn't be able to run on it, but it would make those who want that 'windows look and feel' happy...

Today's class project

Longfeather writes "Tukwila, Washington's cash-strapped Foster High School may have to turn down US$43,000 worth of free PCs because of a Mac-only IT policy already in place. Read here(1) and here(2)." Surely some school would be willing to bend (or rethink) policy rather than turn away new computers.

If the terms "PC" and "Mac" were swapped in this story, would the comments would be the opposite of what they are now? More power to the loyal Mac school, refusing the "free" PCs that Microsoft is offering so they can infiltrate and overrun the district!

Discuss.

Fire 2/3rds of the IT staff...

If studies are correct that enterprises deploying Macs versus PCs only require 1/3rd the amount of full-time IT support staff, the answer is for the school district to fire 2/3rds of their IT staff if they want to cut down support costs in order to accept the grant for Mac computers. The IT staff are either contract employees or probably fall under the same union protection as the janitors and bus drivers. Firing them would be easier than firing teachers (which I'm not advocating). So, fire 4 of their 6 IT staffers. Despite the fact Macs cost more per machine (upfront) than their PC counterparts, the school districts would save more money considering how much trouble it is to police OS licenses because of Microsoft's money-hungry licensing audits of school districts and charities...

Apple is not giving these computers away...

From the article: "...a grant from a nonprofit organization offering 30 new Macintosh computers and six laser printers..." I don't think Apple is a non-profit, do you? People seem to assume that these are coming from the company and reacting as if it's a power-grab. Relax.

6 people on the IT staff!!!

According to their website, they have 2,600 students. I'm the technology coordinator for a school district with 2,200 students and ~700 computers (97% Mac).... Guess how many IT people we have?

One.... I handle everything from setting the machines up to networking to adding users. Every student gets a file server account that follows them from 1st to 12th grade. All students in 6-12 get an e-mail account. Every computer is networked.

This district will be getting a call from me tomorrow, and a letter to the editor to the King County Journal.

Welcome to Washington State Land of all that is

Assbackwards.

Things like this is an everyday occurance in this state.

Dolemite
_____________________

Linux???

If they find PC's with Windows simpler to maintain, a statement that I can only believe in if they have no experience with any other OS, then they have an entirely different problem on their hands: The IT staff is incompetent. That the IT staff is incompetent is something I can believe if the district is so poor that they simply took the 6 cheapest "technicians" they could find. This district would do well in replacing the IT staff with people who could, at the least, support Linux. Their costs, since this is the motivating factor, would drop, and they would be independant of being bullied into future upgrades from Redmond.

But sadly they are probably to intellectually challenged to realise this.

Re:$43,000 in free hardware would make that...

No ass, that's about 62 eMacs or 43 iBooks from the Apple Education price list. Would you rather they use commodity Dells that will be dead in 18 months?