Apple may not have the stranglehold on the education market that it once had, but it's definitely not out of the running, yet, either. The Racine Board of Education just approved a budget of almost a million dollars to spend on Apple hardware and software. But according to a Journal Times article, the decision to buy from Apple wasn't an easy one; debate at the board meeting was fierce, but after two hours of deliberation, impassioned pleas on Apple's behalf by at least nine teachers, and "personal attacks" against the board members who tried to squelch the deal in favor of buying Wintel, the motion was finally approved.

Apparently a few board members wanted to override the Facilities and Technology Committee's recommendation to purchase Macs, by insisting that the recommendation be sent back to be bidded on. That motion was defeated, after several school faculty members made it clear that buying anything other than Apple would place an undue burden on the teachers, who also need to function as de facto system administrators. If the Apple opponents were really making such ignorant statements as "You are cheating [the students] from using computers that are compatible with the rest of the world," well, then, those personal attacks were probably well deserved. Apparently these people aren't aware that you can use PC-formatted media in a Mac without any extra software. Or that VirtualPC allows a Mac to run any software or operating system available for the Intel platform. Not compatible? Please... Macs are the most compatible computers in the world.

The other thing that strikes us about this whole scenario, though, is that in Racine's case, it looks like everyone's fighting for Apple but Apple itself. Granted, we doubt that an Apple representative could be present at the meeting itself, and we don't know what kind of deals or support Apple provided prior to the meeting to help Racine County buy their Macs, but in the article, Apple seems very absent. Is this another case of Apple's best salespeople not working for Apple? And is Apple perhaps not as involved in these school deals as it should be? It's purely speculation on our part, but we suspect that Apple really has to start targeting those educational accounts now that its financial house is largely back in order. After all, Macs in the schools feeds Macs in the home.