Laptop expense just doesn’t compute

A Jan. 3 editorial, “Budget Balancing Act,” asks critics of Gov. John Baldacci’s fiscal priorities to do more than defend programs targeted for cuts. Given Maine’s growing budget shortfall – for the moment approximately $95 million in the current two-year budget – those who defend targeted programs should also offer alternatives. Implicit in this challenge is the unsettling fear that only the painful cuts the governor proposes can meet the state’s need. But is that always the case? Here, for the sake of argument, is at least one alternative.

The Legislature, the governor and the Department of Education should look closely at the state’s laptop program. While the objective of the program has value, has the state’s way of meeting that objective ever been fiscally valid? As far as we can tell from talking with educators around the state, the initial cost of providing laptops for Maine’s seventh- and eighth-graders was approximately $37 million. Replacement costs to date have been approximately $41 million. With additional replacements, over a 10-year period costs will probably exceed $100 million.

The Department of Education proposes expanding the laptop program to ninth through 12th grades (it has already expanded the program to high school teachers at a cost of $2 million per year for four years). On the basis of previous costs for seventh and eighth grades, initial costs for expansion to students in grades nine through 12 should exceed $80 million. Over a 10-year period the cost should exceed $200 million. With all these expenditures, kindergarten through grade six (arguably the most important) will still be uncovered. Is this the wisest use of scarce state revenues? How else might these dollars be spent?

Access to high-speed computing is unquestionably important for all students in Maine. The laptop initiative is not able to provide this access, and it has been unable to provide this access at a very high cost both in dollars and in wasted educational opportunities for Maine students.

An alternative: Using Linux servers and terminals, the town of Hermon has proved that access to high-speed computing and to the Internet can be provided for all students in its district – on the school campus and at home – for a fraction of the cost of laptops or other personal computers (a Linux server and the 40 terminals it can run simultaneously provide the same service as 40 personal computers for about $3,000).

For a fraction of the cost of the current laptop initiative, the same access could be provided not only to all students in Maine but to all residents in Maine. Where investment in laptops means investment in rapidly obsolete hardware and expensive, licensed software, funding a HermonNet system means investment in hardware that easily updates without becoming obsolete. It means public-domain software that is free for all users. It meets the educational needs of the schools and the technological needs of the community. If the state were to adopt this approach, real savings could be found as an alternative to some of the governor’s more painful cuts.

Reallocations of some of the dollars devoted to the laptop initiative might ease the imperatives that are rushing school consolidation into unexpected, if predictable, dead ends. Reallocations in the past of some of the millions already spent on laptops could have solved many of Maine’s broadband needs. Reallocations in the future could still offer a solution. The ConnectME Authority has a $500,000 allocation to support community broadband initiatives in Maine. What might it have done with some of the millions that have been spent on laptops? What might it still do with the millions still slated to be spent?

Perhaps what Maine needs is not laptops for some students but a comprehensive technology plan that includes the schools and communities throughout the state. Perhaps the money to fund such a plan has always been there in the past and could still be there in the future. At times what we may need from Augusta, however, is not only painful cuts but wiser allocations.

The laptop initiative has been an exemplary bipartisan effort for which many people can take credit. Why such a fanciful program was ever funded is one of the mysteries of state government. Perhaps what the laptop absurdity illustrates is another dysfunction in Augusta, an inability to consider Maine’s technological and educational needs at one time and discover a way to address both needs with the same scarce revenues. The genius of HermonNet is that it does what the state has so far failed to do: In Hermon the community’s educational and technology needs have been addressed together and with the same dollars. The result has been remarkable innovation and significant savings. Apparently there has been greater vision in Hermon than in Augusta.

In retrospect the laptop program seems indicative of the way Maine dug the hole that we now find ourselves in. Sometimes when you are deep in a hole, it is a good idea to stop digging, but for that – as a beginning – a little honesty and leadership will be needed.

Yvon Labbe is the director of the Franco-American Centre at the University of Maine. Tony Brinkley is the center’s faculty associate.