Writing for the Yuma Sun, Randy Reese said that teachers and principals will return to Yuma, Az.’s Yuma School District 1 in August to find new iMacs on their desks, thanks to a lease agreement with Apple secured with “soft capital” funds.
The reporter estimates the total cost of the lease to be in the vicinity of a million dollars, though the school district’s director of professional development, Darwin Stiffler, stopped short of offering a total estimate on the lease program.
Reese also suggested that the new iMacs will be set up with Mac OS X v10.3, “Panther,” though Apple has yet to release the software. Apple CEO Steve Jobs told attendees of this past June’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) that Panther would be out before the end of the year, but the company is yet to specify a release date for Mac OS X v10.3.
Stiffler added that the Macs will help administrators and faculty to synchronize with state and district servers to send information like attendance records and grades. “The bottom line is that this will actually free up time for the teachers to spend more time working with the students instead of spending time make reports on the computers,” said Stiffler.
The Yuma School District is Apple-based throughout, according to the report.