Henrico County’s elementary pupils could be the next students in the system to get iBooks, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
There are no immediate plans for an elementary school rollout next year, but Superintendent Mark Edwards has said the possibility of an elementary school deployment would be reviewed and that the county might develop a tentative timeline. But some elementary parents and administrators are ready for the move now, the Times-Dispatch reports.
Henrico schools teamed with Apple and launched the Teaching and Learning Technology Initiative. iBooks were deployed to students and teachers at the beginning of the 2001-02 school year. Last year, the county’s 11,000 middle schoolers and their teachers joined the program.
Dinita Jackson, vice president of Arthur Ashe Elementary School’s PTA, told the Times-Dispatch that her group was under the impression that the iBook program would be going into elementary schools. However, the 2003-2004 school year budget doesn’t include money for an initiative to include elementary pupils. The decision on whether to extend the program to elementary pupils is up to the school board.