ROCKPORT, Maine — The laptop repair bill is in for Camden Hills Regional High School and the total is $33,000. That’s down from $56,000 in the 2010-2011 school year.
The school took measures in the past school year to reduce student carelessness, which administrators said was the root cause of so many repair bills on the state-issued Apple laptops.
Comparatively, Rockland’s high school spends about $5,500 per year on laptop repairs.
But the number from Camden Hills Regional High is a bit deceiving, said Cathy Murphy, business manager of the Camden-area school district. Each student at Camden Hills pays into a laptop repair account. The school took $28,000 from that account to reduce the $33,000 bill this year.
“So the cost to the district was $5,000,” Murphy wrote in an email.
The year before, the district paid about $20,000 of the $56,000 in bills.
None of those costs include the repairs covered by Apple’s warranty or money paid by students for intentional damage.
New Superintendent Elaine Nutter credited the plummet in repair costs to a new plan by the district. Students were educated about how to care for their laptops and teachers were asked to monitor use and reprimand carelessness. And in part because of the number of repairs, students whose computers broke had to wait a while before getting a new one.
“Students just thought if the laptop was damaged they’d get another one — they weren’t thinking about the effect of that. They realized there was a consequence,” Nutter said.
The school also collected laptops before school vacations so they could be checked for any damage. That, Nutter said, caught small problems that if gone unfixed could have become larger, more expensive problems.
When the district got the laptop repair bill last school year, administrators said the costs might jeopardize the program. Nutter said the school plans to go forward with the laptop program and it’s no longer in jeopardy, but if there are too many laptops broken at any one time students will have to wait a while before they get their computers back.
Although student carelessness contributed to the amount of repairs last year, Nutter said part of the problem is also that the computers are getting older.
“We are in the last year of this laptop generation. The laptops are aging. We recognize the logistics of having older laptops,” she said.
The school is one of 69 statewide that participate in a Maine Learning Technology Initiative program under the Maine Department of Education that makes laptops available to high school students.
Camden Hills spends about $150,000 to lease 778 laptop computers each year from the state.
If they did not rely on Apple’s proprietary technology, costs could be much less. A generic laptop that runs Linux could achieve further savings.. but then, students would actually have to learn something about operating systems. A win-win. Generic laptops could save major $$ and not continue to feed a glutenous near-monopoly corporation (Apple).
Are you kidding? This is the Camden Rockport high school we are talking about here. Nothing but the best for the kids in this school system. The second somebody might bring up giving them anything but the best laptops available, the rich parents will cry foul.
I’m not disagreeing with you in the least, just saying it the way I see it.
Camden Hills spends about $150,000 to lease 778 laptop computers
That is $192 per computer per year. with a life expectancy of 3-4 years wouldn’t it be cheaper to buy them if they have to pay for repairs anyway?
With cloud storage, networking, etc. the computer would not need to be high end
WHAT are the Camden Hills school kids doing to these computers to the tune of $33,000….calisthenics??
They could just not buy them laptops at all, the schools all have computer labs, do they not? Not to mention, you would be hard pressed to find a high school kid who does not have at least a family computer at home.
After using my laptop daily for nearly five years with out any major problems (I did have to replace the battery), I wonder what on Earth could be causing all the malfunctions.
Are they using the laptops as Frisbees?
Maybe if the students had some skin in the game they would be more careful with the school districts computers.