Teenage Students Ask the Big Question About iPads
“I don’t have to stress that a billion dollars is an insane amount of money,” Jacques assures me right away.
I feel much better. I was starting to think I was the one who was insane.
As I travel through high schools in L.A., often observing classrooms where there are 45 or 50 kids packed into a classroom, I am obsessed with the LAUSD’s billion-dollar commitment to Apple iPads. I understand that this money does not come from the general budget but from money earmarked for school construction; on the other hand, the logic by which iPads qualify as a construction project seems so convoluted that it could apply to anything. Like…more teachers.
Anyway, in an attempt to understand how this purchase makes any sense, I’ve consulted a panel of experts: seven tech-whiz high school students from an after-school program called UrbanTxt, along with the program’s founder, Oscar Menjivar. The highly competitive after-school program, whose mission is to teach coding and entrepreneurship to male high school students of color in South L.A. and Watts and which this past year accepted only 1/5 of its applicants, is home to some of the sharpest young minds in the city—who in addition to their tech expertise, also happen to be the target audience of the LAUSD’s massive purchase. Over pizza and soda, in a computer lab crammed with monitors and laptops, these brilliant teenage guys patiently explain the complexities of the problem at hand.
“The thing is, these iPads are probably gonna be obsolete in three years,” says