The Geary USD 475 Board of Education has approved the purchase of 540 laptop computers from HP for use by ninth grade students in the school district.

The cost is $403,920.

IT spokesman Jan Pabitsky explained the purchase is part of the 1-to-1 laptop computer initiative. “Throughout the next several years we’re going to expand the 1-on-1 project. Next year we want to roll out p-c’s for the ninth graders. That’ll be about 540 of them. The following year we’ll do tenth-grade, eleventh-grade, and twelfth-grade. Now what will actually happen is the ninth graders will carry theirs to the tenth grade, and we’ll refresh the ninth grade, and then so on and so forth until we have everyone with a 1-to-1 at the secondary level.”

The funds to purchase the computers have been budgeted for this year as part of a six-year plan for the school district.