LOS ANGELES – The civil rights movement may have reached its low point last week when Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy claimed the district’s $1 billion effort to provide all students with school-issued iPads “is a civil rights issue.”

Deasy made the bizarre declaration in defense of the new iPad initiative, which has come under public criticism for being a supreme waste of taxpayers’ money.

There are reports that some classrooms can’t connect to the Internet, making the iPads unusable for instruction. Other reports indicate hundreds of students have bypassed the district’s firewall – with as little as two clicks – to access inappropriate websites, according to the Los Angeles Times.

MORE NEWS: Know These Before Moving From Cyprus To The UK

One student admitted to the L.A. Times that he mostly uses his school-issued iPad to play a soccer video game at home.

Adding to the chaos is the uncertainty of whether or not parents will have to pay the district $678 to replace any broken or lost iPads.

Deasy refuted suggestions that the initiative has been riddled with problems.

“It’s an astonishing success,” Deasy told the L.A. Times last week. “I couldn’t be more pleased to get (the iPads) in the hands of students and teachers.”

Deasy continued: “This is a civil rights issue. My goal is to provide youth in poverty with tools that heretofore only rich kids have had. And I’d like to do that as quickly as possible.”

At least one Los Angeles school board member disagrees with Deasy’s view.

MORE NEWS: How to prepare for face-to-face classes

“Equity in education is a civil right. iPads are not a civil right,” said board member Monica Ratliff, according to KABC.com.

Ratliff suggested Deasy’s comparison was unfair to the  many Americans who struggled over the years to achieve genuine civil rights for racial minorities.

The iPad controversy will be addressed during a special school board meeting on Oct. 29, KABC.com reports.