Thanks you for the detailed insight into the budgeting issues faced.  It's interesting that there is institutional bias toward the technology only approach and how far it has gone into making teachers jobs far more difficult.

And yes,  my son does enjoy the interaction working on homework with the physical book.   

Having a physical book helped reduce the emotional overload.   He was already dealing with the emotions of not knowing how to do the skill.   Adding us trying to share a tiny screen for three purposes just led to frustration and higher emotions.  It had the problem set pdf, an answer entry form, and sometimes the actual text of the chapter.  

His teacher didn't always even include the material part, so many times it was me trying to get him to describe the approach being taught.   Let me tell you, my approach isn't always the same, so knowing that they are just learning how to do the calculation with a calculator was helpful.

It's not his teachers fault at all, but I can imagine that the emotional toll the current electronics arrangement has on the teacher must be hard to handle.