Tullahoma Looking At Grant For Digital Textbooks

Tullahoma is banding with three other similar-sized school systems to strive to get a $20 million federal grant that would move them all into the digital textbook age. Tullahoma City Schools and the systems from Lawrence, Lincoln and Warren counties have signed a letter of intent to collectively apply for a U.S. Department of Education Race to the Top district grant that would fully pay for the effort in the first four years. Then, it would be up to the individual systems to fund the programs from then on. Dr. Dan Lawson, Tullahoma City Schools director, said that the money would go toward providing technical support and the median to use the digital textbooks, such as Apple’s iPad or Google’s Chromebook. Lawson said that after the four-year period is completed, it would probably cost the Tullahoma system about $250,000 a year to add new digital media sources for the textbook material because the older iPads and Chromebooks will have reached their useful lifespan. He said the cost to the system would be less than the $300,000 to $400,000 spent annually now on printed textbooks.