RVC School District donates old iPads to Northwell

Old, outdated technology in the Rockville Centre School District has received new life, and has possibly become a lifeline for patients in isolation.

Earlier this month, Superintendent Dr. William H. Johnson said he received an email from hospital representatives requesting iPads for patients in area hospitals. Johnson said he and the district’s technology director, Mike Anderson, began looking into what they had on hand so that people in quarantine could communicate with their families.

“We began to look into right away,” Johnson said, “and found we had 40 iPads slated for disposal at the end of the school year.”

He said these were the oldest in the district and out of warranty, but “still had some life in them.” Anderson was able to resurrect all of them by the end of the day, cleaning them of all the apps except for essentials such as FaceTime. Through a contact at Northwell Health, Anderson was able to drop them off for delivery to the hospital system, where they were dispensed to various hospitals.

“We were wonderfully surprised we had this resource to share with them and help these people, many of whom were critically ill, connect finally with their families,” Johnson said.

Due to a technicality in the law, the iPads had to be declared obsolete by the Board of Education in order to become the property of Northwell Health. The board voted in favor of the resolution, retroactively, on April 15.

“In Rockville Centre and all across Nassau County, I think, a much larger community has developed of caring people who have been reaching out to various institutions for help,” Johnson said. “It’s just been remarkable to me how everybody, the minute they hear about something, jumps into action and finds a way to provide that connection with somebody else.”