All members of the Lawrence school board were present for a meeting on Monday, March 21, 2016.

After nearly two hours of review, the Lawrence school board approved a proposal to purchase 5,000 iPads for the district. Much of the discussion centered on whether iPads were preferable to laptops, and several board members said most people they had spoken with were in favor of laptops.

“I think the iPad is great for consumption, but I don’t think it’s very good for production,” said board member Rick Ingram, who voted against the proposal at the board’s meeting Monday. “And it’s not that you can’t, but if a kid has a choice to write a five-page term paper on a laptop or an iPad, they’re going to choose the laptop.”

The board voted 5-2 to approve a lease-purchase agreement with Apple that totals about $3.2 million, with board members Ingram and Kris Adair voting against the measure. It would have been about $1.3 million more to purchase MacBook Airs instead of iPads, according to Jerri Kemble, assistant superintendent of educational programs and technology. Kemble, along with Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Angelique Nedved, put forward the lease-purchase plan.

School board member Jill Fincher said that while most middle school students she asked said they’d prefer laptops to iPads, they probably aren’t taking cost into consideration. Fincher said that because students will likely be issued a laptop once they get to high school — the district plans to roll out 1-to-1 devices for the high school level next year, and board members favor laptops for that level — she feels better about the decision to go with iPads at the middle schools.

“Middle school is kind of that bridge, and I guess if it comes down to cost, I’m OK with sacrificing that knowing that high school is going to be a different four-year set of tools and preparation,” Fincher said.

As part of the lease-purchase agreement, the district would pay an interest rate of about 1 percent over a four-year period, which amounts to about $47,000 in interest payments. At the end of the four-year period, the district could purchase the devices for $1 each, sell the devices to a third-party or sell them back to Apple with the proceeds going toward another lease-purchase plan.

In addition to about $2.5 million for the 5,000 iPads, there are also some laptops being purchased. The agreement includes $382,000 for 500 MacBook Air computers. The rest of the total is made up of accessories, services or training.

School board President Vanessa Sanburn said she was struggling with the decision as well, and that even though a majority of students and teachers that she has talked to also preferred laptops, that may change in time given the district’s expansion of blended learning. Blended learning uses iPads in the classroom with the goal of using more interactive material and personalizing lessons.

“I think that the way that some of the blended learning classrooms are changing and the way that some of those iPad initiatives are going, the iPad actually might be a better device in some respects than a laptop for certain things,” Sanburn said. “So I’m trying to keep an open mind that in some ways this might actually be better for some learning that we want to be happening in our classrooms.”

At the end of the meeting, the board also discussed the recent absences of Adair, who has not been present for several board engagements over the past month. After Adair indicated she would “take a less active role” on the board through May because of a business commitment, Sanburn suggested she consider resigning if she was not able to attend meetings.

“In our correspondence you had indicated that you might take a break,” Sanburn said to Adair. “Are you no longer considering doing that?”

Adair responded that if she has to attend all the meetings in order to continue on the board, she will.

“It would be to my benefit if I could take a few meetings off; I was hoping to miss as few as six meetings,” Adair said. “It was suggested to me that that was not an option. The commitment that I made to the school board is important enough to me that if I must attend all the meetings in order to make my commitment, I will be at the board meetings.”

In other business the board:

• Voted to approve a bond construction bid for Broken Arrow, Prairie Park, Quail Run and Sunflower elementary school projects.

• Voted to approve a bond construction bid for Pinckney Elementary School.

The next regular board meeting will be April 11 at the district offices, 110 McDonald Drive.