001greetings this is Dr Kurt mold with an update to our school board on the technology replacement recommendation for the purchase of Chromebooks this meets our culture of operational excellence and our culture of educational Excellence uh in that uh we are bringing forward today a recommendation for uh one of the lowest bid uh warranty and device products uh from the number of bids that we received D um and just a note that our Chromebooks and our technology also allow our students to access content in curriculum engaged in collaborative uh design uh of instruction and collaborative activities through the use of uh the variety of Google tools and other apps available to our students uh including supplemental materials and core materials related to uh our Universal instruction resource adoption we're focused specifically on the replacement of Chromebooks
002and for uh those watching at home and for our members new to the board we have a onetoone device initiative which means that every student in our district is assigned a device in kindergarten in first grade those devices are iPads in 2nd through 12th grade those devices are Chromebooks The Replacements are for the devices that have reached end of life that are primarily L located in the carts in 3rd through fifth grade the carts at third through fifth grade uh store the Chromebooks that our third through fifth graders use those devices do not go home they're assigned to students but they stay in the school uh teachers can send them home for a variety of different uh purposes or topics if a student is going out of town is going on vacation is ill or
003would like to complete a project at home on a limited basis those devices um have gone home with students in third through fifth grade but they primarily stay in the classroom students who are starting sixth grade and Ninth Grade respectively are issued a new Chromebook that stays with them through their middle school or High School experience uh and they turn them in at the end of uh their middle school or High School experience middle schoolers issued a new Chromebook when they enter 9th grade and a 12th grader turns in their Chromebook at the end of 12th grade we either put those devices in carts if they're still in great working condition which most of them are in our system uh or we uh we sell them at our uh District technology sale or they end
004up being recycled this is the 11th year that we've purchased Chromebooks um and so uh we've been doing this for quite a while and uh just to note that the funding for this year's Chromebook purchase comes from uh fund 46 uh this is also the fourth year of direct purchasing of Chromebooks over leasing which has led to a significant Savings in leased interest uh in previous years when we've leased there's been about $37,000 annually of leased payments and um eventually the principle of that starts to uh catch up as well so uh direct purchasing over leasing has been a fiscally more responsible uh direction to move in uh and just a quick note that we hold on to uh Chromebooks for four years now as opposed to previous years when we've held on to three
005uh those devices for three years uh this has allowed us to get more life out of these Chromebooks um it has also uh allowed us to maintain a more manageable number of Replacements and then overall Savings in procurement this year uh we sent bids out in hopes that we would get ahead of any sort of potential uh increase in overall cost for technology related to anticipated tariffs um and so we sent our uh requests for proposals out much earlier than we typically do and uh received several competitive bids in return um we're moving forward with a new vendor this year in the past you uh may have recognized that we've used a PDS uh which was recently purchased by another company called converge and we had partnered with them for um several years um however
006this year uh an unexpected uh bid came in through traera for the exact same device that was $28 per unit less uh than um the bid from PDS and uh they significantly underbid almost all of their uh competitors for a compatible uh device and so we're actually purchasing the exact same device we purchased last year and the before that um this year uh this price is is highly competitive it marks the first time we've paid less than $200 a unit for this device um and we're able to secure uh the number through trfa we're also purchasing uh an extended warranty that includes unlimited ADP or accidental damage protection so if a device accidentally breaks if a student drops it uh basically any accident uh is covered that is not intentionally uh caused uh is covered
007with unlimited uh numbers of returns for repairs for that device over the lifetime of that warranty um that's a significant increase in uh previous warranty coverage this also comes with a 2% of total sale uh or total volume purchase theft or loss coverage at 2,000 devices 2% basically means that we can replace up to 40 devices no no questions asked uh so if a device is stolen if it's lost on a bus and is never returned um we can get up to 40 of those devices replaced no questions asked this is not something that we've had available to us in the past and we believe that this uh is a great opportunity for us to continue to uh recover and uh maintain our total Fleet over time uh other deciding factors included the compatibility with
008existing devices this is a device it's very familiar to us uh our talented technicians know how to repair these and repair them quickly uh our overall warranty coverage also allows us to maintain a parts closet so we can uh maintain uh things like bezels like screens like keyboards things that are quickly replaced in these devices uh without having to send them back for warranty repair so um you know we could also quickly turn around devices internally so uh both of those things exist to us both the parts closet and the warranty repair and uh we've received excellent references from similarly sized districts uh particularly Stevens Point Westbend uh that gave us very positive references about their experience with this vendor so things to move uh excuse me things to know moving forward uh the total
009cost for Chromebook the management licenses uh and so we that means that you have to spend an amount of money with Google to get the device enrolled in the Google Administration console which allows us as a district to manage those devices uh so the total cost for Chromebook those licenses the warranty that I uh just described in ass and Associated Services is $526,000 uh with the funding for the warranty being sourced from fund 10 and the technology department uh and the cost of the Chromebook and Chrome OS licenses coming from uh fund 46 uh it's important to note that technology has put money into fund 46 with a multi-year device replacement cycle I've talked about this in um in previous board meetings and uh presentations and the technology replacement cycle has several Peaks and valleys
010and there will be years where the money that is um allocated for device replacement will um exceed what technology uh needs to replace device devices in that year and those are the The Valleys of the technology budget and in those years when that happens we put those uh additional conserved dollars aside to pay for years when uh there's additional um replacement dollars needed uh in some of these replacement cycles and so uh overall this represents an actual decrease in the the technology budget just knowing that the funding source from fund 46 is on the table and so with that the recommendation is uh before you it obviously eclipses the $250,000 threshold uh which is why this is a matter reserved for uh board action and so feel free to reach out with any questions um
011and uh look forward to hearing from you thanks take care [Music]