Like wide-eyed kids on Christmas morning, the seven board members for Montezuma-Cortez School District Re-1 powered up brand new iPads earlier this month, complete with protective rubber cases. Unlike Christmas gifts, the iPads aren’t theirs to keep — at least forever.

For now, the board members have license to use the iPads as tools to cut down on paper usage and more easily access information about the district.

Also given the gadgets were superintendent Alex Carter, his secretary Linda Diffendaffer and chief financial officer Melissa Brunner.

“We decided it was time to go paperless with school board packets,” Carter said, referring to the 50-page (sometimes longer) stack of documents the board members pore over each meeting. “The paper packets were a big waste of energy, paper and money.”

According to Brunner, the district paid about $6,000 for the 10 iPads. Between paper and ink costs, postage, and employee time to compile the packets, Carter estimated the iPads would pay for themselves within two years. The average lifespan of an iPad is about three years.

Along with the iPads, Re-1 also purchased two other board room features for $950 — a ceiling-mounted overhead projector and a tabletop document camera. With the latter, opaque pages from books, periodicals and old records can be viewed on the projector screen, whereas the old technology required making transparent slides.

Carter thought the upgrades set an appropriately forward-thinking tone.

“This is a relatively low-cost budget item to model the 21st century district we want ours to be,” he said.

Carter added that the iPads dovetail nicely with Senate Bill 15, sponsored by state Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, and signed by Gov. John Hickenlooper in March. It allows school districts to set policies so board members can attend meetings remotely by phone or video conference. They cannot take part in executive sessions this way, however.

The iPads are Re-1 property, so the board members do not get to keep them after they resign or are defeated in an election. Instead, they will be passed along to the next member.

Jack Schuenemeyer, a third-year board member, listed several benefits of the new devices.

“If we’re traveling, they’ll let us log in to the (district’s) website and read the materials. They’re easier on the environment. If you need to find a key word in a policy document hundreds of pages long, you can do a word search. They’ll save us time and an awful lot of paper,” he said.

Schuenemeyer added that if there’s any uneasiness among the other board members, they aren’t showing it.

“Everyone seemed enthused about them,” he said. “I think there was strong support for this change.”

Other school boards and government entities in Southwest Colorado are evolving at different paces, technology-wise. Dolores Re-4a and Mancos Re-6 still use conventional paper packets. Durango 9R is transitioning from aging laptops to iPads next fiscal year, said district spokeswoman Julie Popp.

Local governments have, thus far, gone with Apple competitors. The Cortez City Council has used black-and-white Amazon Kindles for about two years, City Manager Shane Hale said.

“Our models are fairly basic and rudimentary — no touch screen or Internet access, but they get the job done,” Hale said. “It was a pretty big leap going from a hard copy packet to a digital one.”

County commissioners Keenan Ertel and Larry Don Suckla bring their personal iPads to the commission meetings. Steve Chappell, meanwhile, still drops by the office to get a hard copy of the packet ahead of time. But he’s open to a change.

“Looks like this old man’s got to go that route, too,” he said.

Mancos’ Board of Trustees is testing out new, fresh-out-of-the-box Kindle Fires, the black-and-white version’s snazzier cousin. It has full color graphics and wireless Internet. Town Clerk/Treasurer Heather Alvarez said she’ll continue issuing paper packets to the board the next few meetings, to make sure they’re comfortable.

When it comes to technology, gradual change — not cold turkey — sometimes is the safest option.

lukeg@cortezjournal.com