Mass. school suspends pilot laptop program

ANDOVER, Mass. – A funding shortfall has forced Andover school officials to scrap an ambitious program to provide laptops for every fifth-grade pupil in the public school system, ending an experiment that began three years ago.

The school needed another $1 million for a more than fourfold expansion of the program to all fifth-graders, but could not let other crucial needs go unfunded in the school, officials said.

“We are hoping to get back to this program eventually, but for this next year we just could not find the funds within or without the school budget,” Andover Superintendent Claudia Bach told The Boston Globe. “We said from the outside this was a pilot, and unfortunately, in June the pilot will come to an end.”

Parents have been underwriting the $2,000-per-pupil cost for the laptops given each year to the group of 79 students, with a combination of scholarships and low-interest loans. School officials had planned to expand the program, which began in 2001, to all 460 fifth-grade pupils, but grant-writing efforts have turned up empty-handed.

“When we saw what it would cost to expand the program, we got very concerned about the equity issue – which kids had them and which didn’t,” said Anthony James, chairman of he Andover School Committee. “Unless we could fund across the system, we felt that we had to follow the recommendations of the superintendent and postpone it until we could afford that.”