Nearly everything a student in most schools needs to do for their classes is now on a school-issued laptop or tablet, making these devices essential for accessing learning materials.
But maintaining these 1-to-1 computing environments in schools comes with a big hurdle: figuring out who is responsible for paying when devices need to be repaired or replaced, especially as district leaders report that one of the biggest challenges with 1-to-1 programs is students damaging or destroying devices.
Half of district and school administrators say the district or school is responsible for the cost of repairs or replacements, unless it’s the student’s fault, according to a nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey of 1,135 educators conducted in September and October.
“A lot of that has to do with the fact that we are requiring students to have these [devices] in order to access their educational materials,” said Sarah Radcliffe, the director of future-ready learning for the Altoona school district in Wisconsin. “So we have to take on some of the burden in keeping them in good working order.”
In the 1,800-student Altoona district, if there’s intentional damage, such as if a student pokes the screen with a pen, then the district charges the student for the materials to repair the screen, Radcliffe said.
The district’s student handbook lists the costs of repairs, and families sign off on the acceptable use policy, she said. The district repairs accidental damage at no cost to families, but repeated accidental damage could lead to the family paying for some repairs, as well as a discussion with the student and family about how to better care for the device. For families who might not be able to afford repairs, the district finds other ways to pay for them.
“We want everyone to have equitable access to our 1-to-1 devices and to be able to access their educational content,” Radcliffe said. “We have to walk that fine line of trying to teach responsibility without being punitive to a child who maybe makes a mistake.”
But even if families don’t pay, the students don’t lose access to their device because it’s necessary for learning, Radcliffe said. That means districts like Altoona have to take into account those unrecovered costs when planning their technology budgets.
In fact, more than a quarter of district and school administrators say their district or school always pays the cost of repairs or replacements regardless of the nature of the damage, according to the EdWeek Research Center survey.
But the challenge of maintaining 1-to-1 programs and paying for repairs is now exacerbated by lack of funding, district technology experts say. The federal pandemic relief funds that helped districts make huge investments in technology have since expired, and districts that relied on those funds now have to find other ways to repair or replace school-issued student devices.
To make the funding challenge even harder, the replacement cycles for school-issued learning devices typically fall into 3- and 5-year cycles, according to the Consortium for School Networking, or CoSN. That means a huge number of devices that were purchased by schools in 2020 and 2021 to support remote and hybrid learning are now nearing the end of their life cycles.
