Editorial

By Jon A. Brake

The Manhattan School District will close two schools next year to save money. At the same time the district will spend $750,000 on computers.

According to the Technology Report given to the School Board for Wednesday nights meeting the school district has one computer for every 2.5 students. The District Computer Inventory by School and Computer Type printed to the right shows the District with 1818 computers. All are under five years of age. The District also added 40 more computers at last months meeting and plans are to retain the computers that were to be replaced.

The District also has computers at the Roberson Education Center that are not on the inventory list.

At the May 15th meeting the Board spent $76,491.00 on four new servers and tape libraries. When asked if the District needed the new servers they were told that they were on the list to be replaced. All were under five years of age.

At Wednesday nights meeting the District was asked to start replacing printers. They were told: "The district currently has inkjet printers on most computers throughout the district. These printers have an inexpensive initial purchase cost but a high maintenance cost. (The current cost per print, ranges from $0.35 to $0.60 per page.) The Technology department's goal is to cut the use of inkjet printers and use the more cost efficient Laser printers."

The cost of the laser printed page is $0.47. The laser printer cost double the inkjet.

Think this School District has money problems? Yes, they do, but it is not the lack of money.