The Henrico County School Board in Virginia choose to stay with the laptop computers that their students and teachers have been working with for the past several years. With its $12.4 million dollar contract with Apple expiring in June of 2010, the district had to decide how to proceed. District leaders examined 10 different options including a number of low-cost, lightweight netbooks. In the end, however, the board decided to continue using the full-size laptop that the students and teachers are currently using, citing the netbooks' small screen as enough of a drawback to override the cost savings advantage.

One of the other options that was considered as a cost-cutting measure was to change from a one-to-one model to classroom sets of computers stored on a cart and moved classroom to classroom as a teacher needed them. The board rejected that idea as well, choosing to continue with the one-to-one program that now serves more than 11,000 middle school students in the district.

The board's recommendations were good news to district superintendent Patrick Russo who supports staying with the district's popular one-laptop-per-student initiative.

Source: Henrico weighs laptop options / Board leans toward keeping current ratio of one per student, Richmond Times-Dispatch by Juan Antonio Lizama, January 15, 2010