The school district spends about $70 per computer for MS Office. It can spend about $3 or more per email account for licensing, servers to support this, calendaring features, etc. But, how much money could the District save it implemented Google's Gmail and Apps (word processing, presentation, spreadsheet)? It's an interesting idea that Lucie deLaBruere writes about in this blog post. Consider the following:

Capuchino High School has adopted Google Apps for your Domain as one of several tools used to implement a Global Communications program The program uses tools that expand the circle of influence these students have outside of their local community by helping them connect and collaborate. Google Apps for you Domain provides the school with several powerful Google tools, while allowing them to keep their own school domain name: http://www.capuchinohighschool.org/ and allowing them to keep control of the student accounts using a web based control panel.

“The kids have access to the Gmail function, with chat turned off, docs and spreadsheets and their own homepage (iGoogle) that they can customize. We also allow them to use the calendar function. The students also use this e-mail account to create their 'blogger' accounts. Every kid in the Global Communications classes has their own blog. The next step in the process for some of them is to start to use reader to subscribe to feeds. “

In another district in Vermont, substantial savings have been achieved.

The Google Apps for Your Domain free education access resulted in a substantial savings per yea. “Having a web based solution has offered our staff more flexibility than our previous client based solution. Docs and spreadsheets is widely used as are email and calendaring. All in all we have found Google apps to be user friendly and easily scalable to our needs."

“Google for Domains makes a wild amout of sense. Have a company offer a school free email, a management console, collaboration tools, integrated web 2.0 services and spam filtering...for free ? Using your own domain name ? This program saves schools money and also all configuration and maintenance time. Reclaiming that money and personnel time alone... Good problems to have in my book. Most schools are barely scratching the surface educating kids for the present day. Embracing opportunities and technologies like this in secondary education, discussing and modeling these technologies instead of limiting their experiences will bring us closer to educating students for the future - where they'll be working. “

As Texas school districts--like San Antonio ISD--feel the budget crunch, imagine saving $70 at minimum per new computer purchased. With 21,000 computers in the District, that would have yielded a savings of $1.4 million dollars. Wow...that's the same amount as our State Technology Allotment. If you keep existing licenses and multiply $70 by the annual 3-4K machines, the savings are still substantial ($210K). If you switch email services, what might the savings be?

With 41% of SAISD machines obsolete, and no increases in the state technology allotment or the Title II, Part D of No Child Left Behind funding for the District, isn't it time we reconsidered heavy duty investment in expensive software? It's a question many districts are asking.

References
The Infinite Thinking Machine