Correction: The article should have stated that district Supt. Deasy did not participate in the setting up of the bid, nor in the final selection for the iPads project. A panel independently selected the final vendor. The 62,000 Common Core Technology Project devices and professional development support purchased for $39 million and the 47,000 testing devices and storage carts purchased for $22 million will still be used by students and teachers.

Superintendent John Deasy recently called off the $1 billion plan to give every student in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) an iPad.

This has been a controversial issue since the plan was implemented in many schools last year. A bidding was supposed to take place to see which company would supply the devices.

Documents were leaked according to the Los Angeles Times article from Aug. 26, “Deasy drops the iPads, but that doesn’t solve the problem,” which showed that the bidding wasn’t really fair.

Emails and meetings between Deasy, Apple and the software manufacturer Pearson show that Deasy helped Apple and Pearson win the bid. This new information just added more fuel to the fire, until it was called off.

At DPMHS, juniors used iPads to take the Smarter Balance test this past spring. Those iPads are currently locked in a closet at school and won’t be used again until testing in the spring. Although the iPads are at school throughout the whole year, they can only be used for the Smarter Balance testing.

The cancellation of the district’s iPad program is no surprise considering the flaws in the execution of the plan. Some iPads were taken back last school year when some LAUSD students bypassed the security on the devices and were logging onto unauthorized websites.

The district has not yet announced what they will do with the iPads or the money that was invested in this project.