Last Updated on Saturday, January 05, 2008 at 10:01 PM
News Release 07-006 -- January 30, 2007
(FRANKFORT, Ky.) – Beginning this month, 14 of Kentucky’s school districts will upgrade their desktop, laptop and tablet computers in the pilot stage of a statewide project that will involve all 175 districts.
The Instructional Device Upgrade (IDU) Project was funded through the 2006 General Assembly and provides $50 million in bond funding to the state’s public school districts to replace and purchase computers for use by students and teachers. Public school students, staff and faculty and Kentucky Department of Education employees also are eligible to purchase computer hardware for personal use through the project.
The 14 districts in the pilot phase are:
- Ballard County
- Bowling Green Ind.
- Clark County
- Elizabethtown Ind.
- Hickman County
- Jenkins Ind.
- Marion County
- Menifee County
- McCreary County
- Morgan County
- Oldham County
- Owen County
- Pike County
- Somerset Ind.
The Kentucky Department of Education has negotiated with current Kentucky Education Technology System (KETS) vendors to achieve a cost savings of approximately 25 percent over current educational pricing. Compared to pre-existing KETS specs and pricing, IDU pricing will deliver more-powerful devices at a higher cost savings for the districts. In some instances, the IDU prices represent a 50 percent discount over retail.
A Department of Education project team worked with the four IDU vendors (Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM) and American Express to pilot the online order purchasing process with the 14 districts during the entire month of January. The purchases made by districts during the pilot phase are expected to total approximately $1,852,974 of the $25 million allocated in bond funding for the first fiscal year of the initiative.
The remainder of the state’s school districts are expected to begin placing orders for devices in February 2007.
The IDU project is designed not only to purchase new devices, but to also provide a complete solution that will help advance student learning through new instructional technologies.
Planning for the project was directed by an advisory committee composed of district assessment coordinators, assistive learning specialists, superintendents, principals, technology resource teachers, students and district technology representatives. The committee gathered data, provided feedback, outlined district requirements and provided crucial input on key decision points as the Department of Education implemented the project. The committee’s recommendations included providing districts with flexibility in choice of vendor and type of instructional devices and ensuring that these funds would be maximized to realize the greatest educational benefit for students.
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