HOBOKEN, N.J. – When the Hoboken school leaders decided in 2010 to use a windfall of federal stimulus money to purchase laptops for all students in the city’s junior-senior high school, former board member Maureen Sullivan was the only one to vote against the measure.
Four years later, the district’s superintendent Mark Toback has deemed the initiative “unsustainable” and canceled the program, leaving school officials to explore options for recycling dozens of machines that are now collecting dust in a school storage closet.
“It was clear it was going to be a boondoggle and a disaster and that’s what it turned out to be,” Sullivan told EAGnews.
“The stimulus money came and it had to be soaked up … It was like, ‘It’s free money, let’s just spend it,’” she said of the board’s rush to dole out computers, which her colleagues on the board viewed as an opportunity to help the district’s mostly poor students keep up with their wealthier peers.
“There was just no planning or thinking things through logically,” she said. “In general, that’s how the school board operates.”
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