By Jovanna Brinck
Courier Staff Reporter
Due to the district running out of money, students are having difficulty getting their Chromebooks fixed quickly.
In 2012, New Haven Unified School District won the Race to the Top grant, consisting of 29 million dollars in federal funding. This grant allowed the district to buy Chromebook computers to give to every single middle-school and high-school student.
The Chromebooks were distributed to the students like they distribute textbooks, and they would be returned at the end of the students’ senior year. If the Chromebooks had an issue, the students could notify staff and they would get the computers fixed as soon as possible.
With the little grant money left, it is hard for the district to repair the many Chromebooks that are damaged from either misuse or simply malfunction. Students with damaged Chromebooks, needing them for school assignments, are left without for weeks, sometime months.
Students are upset about this issue.
Adivuna Noka, a senior, turned in her Chromebook into the book room to get fixed. After about a month, she received it back but it wasn’t fixed completely. “It still makes weird noises and they never gave me a bill for repairing it so I’m not sure if it’s actually fixed,” She said.
James Logan technology staff are working diligently to ensure that students have Chromebooks to complete their school assignments.
Mr. Shawn, a House 2 principal, has been working with the book room and the district office on technology issues. He stated that “at least a hundred Chromebooks should be arriving soon in order to supply loaners to those students in need.”
Students were relieved to hear that the problem would soon get fixed.
“It’s nice to know that I will still have a Chromebook while they fix mine,” said Noka.
Others did not like the solution.
“I have pages bookmarked on my own computer,” said Fatima Khojazada, senior. The loaner Chromebook that she would receive when would not have her bookmarks on it.
“I want them to fix my personal computer fast not just give me another one!” declared Jessica Leung, senior.
The district is working to find a solution that will keep both staff and students happy.
EDIT: It was brought to our attention by a commenter that the reporter got a detail wrong in this story. Bookmarks and passwords will show up on other computers, so long as you sign into your Google account from them. Bookmarks won’t be lost when switching Chromebooks. We are sorry for this wrong information, and thankful to the person who brought it to our attention.
The issue of bookmarked pages isn’t a problem on chromebooks; since they run user accounts through the chrome browser, all the bookmarks you have on chrome will show up on any other computer you login to chrome with. They don’t even have to be chromebooks; I use chrome on my MacBook, and if I login to that google account on the chromebook, not only are the bookmarks the same, everything else is the same to. History, keychains, even extensions and themes are constant amongst chrome browsers (or in this case, chromebooks) if the same account is used to login to them.
Just clarifying.
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