During Friday morning’s special meeting of the Amarillo Independent School District Board of Trustees, the board unanimously approved the purchase of 3,401 replacement Chromebooks for students on the district’s elementary and middle school campuses.
Doug Loomis, the superintendent of the district, said the new laptops will replace the old devices which will not be able to update after September. This purchase was originally planned to replace 25% of the oldest devices at the elementary and middle school levels as part of a four-year refresh cycle.
The computers, including associated management licensing fees, will cost $1,122,330, Loomis said. But while district officials would normally bring this kind of purchase to the board later in the year, the potential for reimbursement from the state helped the district make the decision to pursue this decision now.
The Amarillo Independent School District’s Board of Trustees recently voted to further make progress on the district’s AmTech Career Academy. At its recent board meeting, the trustees voted to approve a contract with Navajo Office Products to purchase furniture for the facility.
According to previous reports by the Amarillo Globe-News, the district’s board approved the name of its career academy during a special meeting in late October, with it being an expansion of the Amarillo Area Center for Advanced Learning (AACAL) and will be located at 3601 Plains.
The board selected Tri-State General Contracting Group as the contractor for this project during the regular October meeting, with the contract for the project being approved to be $8,652,751. Overall, the project is expected to cost $9,748,590.