Most NC public schools can't afford to maintain student devices

Nearly 75 percent of school districts in North Carolina report they don't have a sustainable funding source to maintain their fleet of computers, including student devices like Chromebooks. North Carolina public schools collectively spent more than $6.6 million last school year to repair broken computers. That's according to a new report, the first of its kind, by the Department of Public Instruction that was presented to the State Board of Education. "It's very important to lift this report up because it is designed to make us have better decisions about what we're doing with technology, particularly in a time when budgets are tighter than ever," said Vanessa Wrenn, the department's chief information officer. The "break/fix report" sought to calculate the total cost of a device beyond its purchase price.