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District IT reports 8,000+ devices, rising hardware costs and possible shift from 1:1 take-home model
Summary
Oak Harbor’s information-services staff told the board it supports over 8,000 devices, documented thousands of help-desk tickets and warned of hardware cost inflation (memory/RAM) driving potential changes to device models and replacement cycles.
District information-services staff told the board on April 13 the district supports more than 8,000 end-user devices including Windows PCs, staff laptops, student Chromebooks, Apple lab machines and iPads. "If you just look across those, it's over 8,000 devices that we currently support in the district," Tyler said, noting this excludes servers.
Tyler gave help-desk numbers from August to the prior week: about 2,250 help-desk tickets opened with roughly 2,100 closed and about 1,900 help-desk calls in the same timeframe. He emphasized that Chromebook repairs account for a large portion of open tickets and underscored how answering the phone and staff availability is a vital support function.
On hardware costs, Tyler warned that memory and RAM price increases are driving PC and Chromebook prices up "literally 30 to 40%" and that servers generally follow a roughly five- to eight-year replacement cycle with staggered rotations. He said the district is considering moving K–1 from a 1:1 checked-out model to a shared-device approach and potentially shifting away from 2-in-1 touch devices toward clamshell Chromebooks to reduce cost and screen time.
The board asked questions about server replacement timing and potential reductions in Chromebook counts; Tyler said purchasing decisions need to be made before summer and that exact replacement counts depend on the final model the tag group approves. No formal procurement decision was taken at the meeting.
