South Dakota governor Mike Rounds is looking for a way to restore about $3 million that the South Dakota Legislature cut from his request to pay for laptop computers for high school students.

The Legislature took the laptop money out of a bill that provided extra funding for a number of programs in the current budget year. Rounds wants to keep the high school program going for a third year. "I think it's a very successful program because not only does it provide the hardware and the software, it provides training for the teachers," he said in answering questions on the Dakota News Network radio stations in March.

"It's about a $2.9 million cost,” he adds,” but I think it's money well spent."

In a follow-up interview in April, the governor said, "I'm going to continue to try to find resources, whether they're private or public, to help schools put laptops in the hands of their high school students and in the hands of trained teachers."

According to Associated Press writer Chet Brokaw:

Schools contribute $2 for every $1 in state money, so the $2.9 million in state funding sought by the governor would have been matched by about $5.8 million by schools.

Rounds said 50 more school districts are interested in joining the program this year, and the funding he requested would have provided laptop computers for another 4,600 students and would have funded the training and equipment to let 400 teachers use the laptops in wireless classrooms.

The governor faces stiff opposition from a number of legislators who, like Senate Appropriations Chairman, Jerry Apa, who asks, "When you're having trouble funding the present system, does it make sense to add programs? If you don't have funding to take care of your needs today, why are you putting in a new program for tomorrow?"

Governor Rounds is looking into private funding sources as well – an approach that Apa has said would be acceptable to the legislature.

Source : Press & Dakotan, Yankton Daily, Rounds Hopes to Restore Laptop Funding and Rounds Seeks Laptop Funding Again