Several sites are pointing to this local news story about Greene County Schools trading in their laptops early to Apple to get all new laptops in early January.
At a special meeting held Monday night at the Greene County Board of Commissioners meeting, the Greene County Board of Education voted to refinance its lease from Apple Computers. The school system will sell its 2,041 existing laptops to MacWorld [sic] before the company announces its new product lines Jan. 9, 2006.
Some interpret this as the school board will be receiving newly updated iBooks/PowerBooks, but a more likely explanation appears to be that they will receive the current top-of-the-line iBooks/PowerBooks.
There is also some concern that later updates could cause some problems:
The threat of bugs in newer-model computers the schools would have to purchase later in the year also made Greene County Schools move early to refresh laptops.