LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Unified School District wants its money back.

District leaders this week are sending letters to computer maker Apple over a $500 million deal it inked with the company in 2013 to provide iPads to all students in the district. Apple subcontracted with the curriculum company Pearson to provide software for the iPads, which district officials contend is virtually worthless, according to the L.A. Times.

The district sent a letter to Apple Monday informing the company that it “will not accept or compensate Apple for new deliveries of (Pearson) curriculum” or related services. School board members also asked district attorneys to look into the possibility of suing Pearson and Apple to recover some of the tax money they wasted, according to the news site.

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The iPads-for-all program was the brainchild of former L.A. Unified superintendent John Deasy, who repeatedly characterized the program as a civil rights issue – poor kids deserved access to the same devices as their wealthier classmates.

The program was an immediate flop, as students who received the tablets quickly circumvented the district’s firewall to surf websites they shouldn’t. Many schools also did not have the infrastructure in place to handle the increased demand on bandwidth.

The contract was initially expected to cost $500 million for the devices, and district leaders set aside another $800 million to improve internet access. As part of a package deal, the district paid $768 per iPad, plus another $200 per device for three years of math and English curriculum.

In total, the district bought 43,261 iPads with Pearson curriculum installed, and another 77,175 iPads without the software, the Times reports.

L.A. school officials contend the Pearson curriculum never worked correctly, and sent a letter last year to Apple asking them to fix the problem. Bernadette Lucas, project director for the iPad rollout, wrote in a report last march that only two of 69 schools with the Pearson software actually use it on a regular basis.

The rest, “have given up on attempting regular use of the app,” she wrote, according to the Times.

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By October, Deasy resigned amid criticism about his cozy relationship with executives at Pearson. The contract between LAUSD and Apple is now part of an FBI investigation.

The letter sent to Pearson from LAUSD this week “asks for a meeting with Apple to discuss the dissolution of the district’s deal with Pearson and a refund for the licenses that it was not able to use, letting it recoup some of the cost that it paid for the failed iPad initiative,” MacRumors.com reports.

“I believe that it is time for Pearson to either deliver on its promises immediately or provide us with a refund so that we can purchase curriculum that actually works for our students,” LAUSD board member Monica Ratliff told the Times in a statement.

Pearson, meanwhile, is “proud” of its involvement with the failed iPad debacle.

According to Cnet.com:

Stacy Skelly, Pearson’s vice president for corporate affairs, said in a statement that the company is “proud of our long history working with LAUSD and our significant investment in this groundbreaking initiative to transform instructional practices and raise expectations for all students.”

The statement continued: “This was a large-scale implementation of new technologies and there have been challenges with the initial adoption, but we stand by the quality of our performance.”

LAUSD also opted this week to return to low-tech devices, and authorized the purchase of new math textbooks to replace the unusable Pearson products.