KCKPS will distribute MacBooks to over 5,000 students
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Nov 6, 2007 at 12:18pm
On Tuesday, Nov. 6 and Wednesday, Nov. 7, over 5000 laptops will be distributed to high school students in the Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools. What sort of laptops? Brand new MacBooks.
Laptop distribution will be from 2:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. on Tuesday, and from 6:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday. The laptop distribution will take place at the following district high schools: F. L. Schlagle, 2214 N. 59th St., J. C. Harmon, 2400 Steele Rd., Sumner Academy 1610 N. 8th St., Washington , 7340 Leavenworth Rd., and Wyandotte, 2501 Minnesota Ave. Teachers already have their MacBooks.
The Kansas City, Kansas Board of Education voted in August to lease a laptop computer for each high school student, and in September changed Board policy to allow students to check out the laptops for use at home. The district is equipping all high school students with laptop computers in order to help all students reach the district’s 2010 goal of graduating high school with the skills necessary to be successful in college.
“For the first time in our nation’s history, we are asking our teachers to get every student to high levels of achievement,” says Susan Engelmann, executive director of High Schools. “Laptop computers will help us to teach each student at their instructional level, so that they can find success.”
This one-to-one laptop distribution is the first district-wide laptop distribution in the Kansas City metropolitan area. It’s also the first one in the area to focus on providing laptops to low-income and minority students who might otherwise not have access to computers at home. (More than three of every four students in the Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools qualifies for free or reduced lunch; 46 percent are African American, and 34 percent are Hispanic.)
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
