School-issued Laptops Becomes A Looping Problem for the Districts

The School District of Palm Beach County is an edge closer to holding families responsible if the student’s School-issued Laptop gets damaged, lost, or stolen. The school board approved the policy with an overview to not bear extensive costs of maintenance and repairs if the laptop gets broken.The District’s chief financial officer revealed there’s been close to $ 1 million in damage to electronic devices since the school district started issuing them last spring. Some of the damage had been covered under warranty by the school authorities at their end. Around $98,000 have passed on to the families.

The concerning dilemma is the school districts have been able to recoup just $5,000 so far. That’s a huge loss of $93,000, and surely the authorities don’t want to bear it themselves. Chief Financial Officer Mike Burke asserted that the district breakage on electronic devices stood at 8%, which is higher than the national average of 6%. Surely the school administrators do not want to coerce pressure on the families who can’t afford to pay it. Hence, alternatives need to be put in place for recovering the losses.

Although coercion of paying the damage charges is not the way, the Board Members say it is crucial to affirm the children about the consequences for not taking care of the school property. If the families could not hold their children accountable for the mistake, then the schools claim that they have the right to make them pay and held responsible for casually dealing with school property.

“I don’t want to take food out of family’s mouth to fix a computer, but there are a whole heck of a lot of families out there who can afford to fix their kids’ mistakes,” said School Board Chairman Frank Barbieri. The district over the past year spent around $20 million to assure every student of a new laptop.