Calvert County Schools Approves Purchase Of New Laptops For 5th And 9th Graders

PRINCE FREDERICK, Md. — Next school year’s fifth- and ninth-grade students in Calvert County will get new laptops after the Board of Education (BOE) approved the purchase at the April 9 meeting.

According to Director of Finance and Procurement Sheldon Taylor, Calvert County Public Schools maintains a structured, multi-year student device refresh cycle in support of its Future-Ready 1:1 initiative. For SY27, the district is scheduled to replace devices for incoming fifth- and ninth-grade students to ensure continued access to reliable instructional technology.

Taylor said the previous plan was to refresh the laptops with previously utilized business-class laptops, but due to significant increases in memory and storage costs, along with ongoing supply chain constraints, this is no longer a fiscally sustainable plan. Instead, Taylor and staff recommended a one-year return to the Lenovo ThinkPad 500w G5 platform for ninth-grade students.

“This temporary adjustment preserves the district’s long-term refresh strategy while avoiding overinvestment during a period of elevated hardware pricing,” Taylor wrote in a memo to the board.

The BOE approved the outright purchase of 2,562 Lenovo ThinkPad 500w G5 student laptops for the total amount of $2,008,351.80. This purchase will result in full district ownership of the devices and includes district imaging, break/fix services and four-year accidental damage protection, through CDW Government LLC, utilizing the University of Maryland MEEC IT Hardware Contract #972016.