School committee asks for Chromebook-care plan after hundreds of weekly repairs

The Lowell School Committee voted March 20 to ask the superintendent to work with the property and technology teams to develop a policy for student care and maintenance of Chromebooks, after members raised concerns about unusually high repair volumes and costs.

Mr Bahu, who made the motion, said central office IT was handling a large volume of repairs and recommended clearer expectations for students and a program to reduce breakage. "We get as many as 250 to 300 per week," he said, noting the district’s scale of device distribution and repair demand.

Superintendent representatives and Miss Desmond, who oversees technology procurement and repairs, explained the district’s current approach: many devices were acquired through pandemic grants and emergency connectivity funding, the district issues roughly 3,000 replacements annually tied to grade-level rollouts, and the IT department previously moved repairs in-house because district leadership found part-time in-house technicians more cost-effective than vendor contracts. "We added part-time staff to solely focus on repairing and getting those back in the hands of students," Miss Desmond said.

Committee members pressed for clearer counts and cost accounting. The superintendent said the district will report back with the average monthly breakage rate, repair costs, staffing needs and options—such as returning to an outside service contract versus expanding in-house staffing. The district also agreed to include details about where recent Chromebook funds came from (grants and local funds) and how replacement and repair spending is budgeted.

The motion passed on a roll call vote with the committee’s affirmative votes recorded in the meeting minutes.

Next steps: the superintendent will provide a written report with monthly breakage averages, estimated repair and replacement costs, recommendations for policy on repeated student damage, and a staffing/contracting recommendation for repairs.