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Elon Musk

Elon Musk Donates More Than $400K to Buy a Laptop for Every 7th and 8th Grader in Flint, Mich.

By
Chris Morris
Chris Morris
Former Contributing Writer
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By
Chris Morris
Chris Morris
Former Contributing Writer
Down Arrow Button Icon
December 20, 2018, 11:49 AM ET

Middle school students in Flint, Mich. are getting an early holiday present from Elon Musk.

The tech billionaire’s foundation will give $423,000 to pay for Chromebooks for all seventh and eighth graders in the Flint Community Schools district. The donation was announced Wednesday night at a school board meeting.

It’s unclear how many students that entails. All totaled, the district has more than 4,500 students between kindergarten and 12th grade. Students who get the laptops, though, will be able to take them home to use them in addition to using them in the classroom.

Flint has been an area of focus for Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, for some time now. In July, he vowed via Twitter to get clean water to every house in the city. (The government has claimed that the drinking water in Flint is currently safe to drink; however, many residents have claimed that is not the case.)

In October, Musk followed through, donating $500,000 to provide an ultraviolet filtration system in all 12 schools in the district. Those are scheduled to be installed no later than January 2019.

The donations come after a rocky 2018 for Musk, who faced the consequence for mocking the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Twitter and smoking marijuana on a podcast.

About the Author
By Chris MorrisFormer Contributing Writer

Chris Morris is a former contributing writer at Fortune, covering everything from general business news to the video game and theme park industries.

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