X

Suit filed to stop iBook school deal

Leslie Katz Former Culture Editor
Leslie Katz led a team that explored the intersection of tech and culture, plus all manner of awe-inspiring science, from space to AI and archaeology. When she's not smithing words, she's probably playing online word games, tending to her garden or referring to herself in the third person.
Credentials
  • Third place film critic, 2021 LA Press Club National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards
See full bio
Leslie Katz

Plans to outfit a suburban Atlanta school district with Apple Computer iBooks have hit a legal snag.

Butch Thompson, a former Cobb County, Ga., commissioner has filed suit to stop the school board's laptop plan, according to the Associated Press. Cobb County Superior Court Judge S. Lark Ingram has set a July 8 hearing date, reports the Atlanta Journal Constitution (subscription required).

Apple announced in May that it will sell as many as 63,000 iBooks to the Georgia school district in one of the company's largest education deals ever.

But Thompson says voters weren't sufficiently informed that a 1 percent sales tax approved in 2003 would be used to start the program, which benefits students in grades six through 12. The vote included language saying the money would be used to replace "obsolete workstations."

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

The first phase of the program costs about $25 million, which the school board approved in April.