One-To-One Laptop Issue

We have tested out a one-to-one laptop project this year with our Tech Apps courses. Now that the year is coming to an end, we are running into issues. We have a few students that are not returning their laptops. Some refuse to pay the $200 fine. We were told by the police that we cannot treat it as stolen because we issued it to them. Anyone have any suggestions or similar situations that they can give me some pointers on how to deal with this situation? Kind of at a loss now. How does your district handle this?

Tags: laptop, laptops, one-to-one

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Permalink Reply by Terri Browning on May 27, 2009 at 7:18pm

I was visiting with our district IT guy about this earlier. He wanted me to ask you - 1. Why do the police say that it can’t be treated as stolen? It is school property that is not being returned. 2. What is the $200 fine for? 3. What kind of agreement did you have the parents and students sign?

We just completed our second year with 1:1 school wide for grades 9-12. Fortunately, we've not had this problem. Our biggest issue so far has been a missing cord, cracked screen or cracked case. No one has deliberately just kept one! Yikes! We're a very small rural school, not quite every one knows everyone else but close. Most likely that makes a difference. Our IT has been in several other districts, is Apple certified, and has lots of contacts. Maybe he'll have ideas later. I'll tell him to join this site! Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Alicia on May 28, 2009 at 10:29am

Thank you for your response.

1. The police said because we issued the laptop to them, we cannot consider it stolen.( but we are questioning this still)
2. $200 fine is our replacement fee for them, the insurance covers the rest.
3. Our agreement is that if it is not returned it will be considered stolen, but because our police told us differently we are not sure what to do with this situation now.

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Permalink Reply by Alicia on May 28, 2009 at 12:42pm

Thank you, yes we aren't losing our trust in students, guess we never dreamed of this happening either. We do have Computrace and they can disable it for us, should the student choose not to return it. I just look at this as a learning experience and know what to and what not to do for next time!

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Permalink Reply by Rich White on May 28, 2009 at 3:33pm

.... Add the fee when they enroll the net year or hold their grades until fee's are paid?

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Permalink Reply by Alicia on May 29, 2009 at 3:15pm

District or State will not allow us to hold grades because of unpaid fines. (not sure which one) Good idea about adding the fee for the next year. Thanks!