Albion school buys 540 Chromebook computers for students to use in class

By Tom Rivers, Editor Posted 9 July 2019 at 5:19 pm

ALBION – The school district is buying 540 new Chromebook laptops for students. The Board of Education on Monday approved spending $119,700 for the Chromebooks, which also includes 18 charging carts.

The district is buying them from CDI Technologies of Ontario, Canada, which submitted the lowest bid.

The district currently has about 200 Chromebooks. The Chromebooks are used by classrooms, with the laptops staying at the school and not going home with students.

Teachers can sign out use of a cart of Chromebooks, with 30 of the computers in a cart.

The district also has a bank of desktop computers in most classrooms or about 1,000 of those computers total. Rather than replace some of those desktop computers, the district will upgrade the memory and processors on 250 of those computers.

The board accepted a bid for $25,002.50 for the components to upgrade those computers. CDW Government LLC of Vernon Hills, Ill., was the low bidder.

The new Chromebooks plus the desktop computers gives the district about 1,740 computers. The enrollment is about 1,800 students.

“We’re nearing the point where we have one device per kid,” said Michael Bonnewell, the district superintendent.

The Board of Education also approved a bid from Connection Public Sector Solutions of Merrimack, NH, for $6,724.60 for “peripherals,” including new printers.

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