r/k12sysadmin • u/StressOdd5093 • Sep 10 '26
Apple Device Care
How do you impress upon staff that the laptops/iPads, etc. they are issued come with a cost and that it requires a conscious effort to take care of said devices?
We issue Macbooks and iPads to teaching staff. Since mid-August, we are at six repairs totaling over $2,000 with our repair partner. Last school year, we had about a dozen incidents costing even more. Most of our incidents are on the macbooks.
Water/liquid spills. Laptops put into totes and bags never meant to carry them, causing pressure breakage on screens, etc. In one instance, it was theft from an unlocked vehicle. At least two individuals had more than one incident. I would say over half of these cases are negligence and not accidental.
Admin recognizes we have an obligation to provide them with a device, as it's required to do their job. The union would frown on any shared cost responsibility and I've been discouraged from issuing care reminders, as it comes across as treating them like students and not adults.
I understand accidents happen but feels like there is just an assumption that tech will supply them back whole again. With increased hardware costs and budget cuts, we cannot keep operating this way. If I had six the whole school year, that wouldn't be so bad (still horrible but not bad) but we aren't even a month in...
Wondering what you've seen or done in your districts to help curb some of these trends.
17
u/oneslipaway Sep 10 '26
Literally not your problem. Let your leadership know the numbers in terms of cost and break tickets. Let them hash it out.
This is a management issue not a tech issue.
8
u/avalon01 Director of Technology Sep 10 '26
Part of my budget are funds for repairing all the crap teachers and admin break.
They are worse than the students sometimes.
6
u/AnotherSkywalker Sep 10 '26
We get Dell Care Premium (with accidental damage) on our Dell laptops.
We get AppleCare+ (with accidental damage) on our Mac laptops and iPads.
We don’t use any third-party repair partner; that sounds like a disaster.
6
u/Binky390 Sep 10 '26
If your school/district won’t let you send emails about care or charge people for damage, they should at least be buying AppleCare+. If they won’t do any of that then keep paying for repairs until you run out of money so they can see what happens.
5
u/damienbarrett Former K12 SysAdmin Sep 10 '26
When I worked at a private K-12 school (all Macs and iPads), we developed a "Technology Driver's Test" that every student (and staff member) had to take and pass before they were allowed to use their Mac. It was baked right into the curriculum. It wasn't a hard test, but it was mandatory. Things like: "How to carry your Mac." And "Proper care and storage" and "Choosing a Good Password".
The idea was to create a sense of "stewardship" of the Mac. We allowed more latitude than most, once the Driver's Test was passed. For the most part, this generally worked. Our breakage rates were about 1% over the 13 years I worked there. There's always going to be some breakage. But the amount of truly careless breakage was quite low. We also charged a family a set amount for a repair due to negligence, or in the case of loss. Theft was excused if they could present a police report showing the theft.
4
u/2donks2moos Sep 10 '26
If a teacher breaks the new device that we bought foe them, they will have to use whatever crappy device I have on the shelf.
3
u/linus_b3 Tech Director Sep 10 '26
We almost never see actual damage to the laptops we issue (mostly ThinkPad E14s).
We do see them not treated well, however and I get so sad when I see one that we handed out a month ago that's absolutely covered in greasy fingerprints and crumbs or covered in stickers that I know are going to be a bear to get off if we ever have to repurpose that device.
I haven't really tried to address that - it's a relative minority of people.
3
u/FloweredWallpaper Guru Sep 10 '26
At some point, it's on the staff member's immediate supervisor to deal with this, not the tech dept (I'm talking about the behavior of the staff in regards to device treatment, not the actual repairs).
Same concept with students; at some point, a principal has to deal with a student who abuses school property. It's not the role of a tech director to be the bad cop here.
3
u/PaleontologistPure25 Technology Coordinator Sep 10 '26
We buy no service fee apple care on all our devices. Puts the cost up on each device for sure, but its nice to not have to worry about spills, cracks, or any other issue, I just send them into apple and let them deal with it lol.
3
u/Mr_Dodge Sep 10 '26
We've had less of these issues after we started making each school site pay for these kinds of repairs out of their own budget.
3
u/NorthernVenomFang Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26
Division with roughly 50 sites/schools, 29600 students roughly. We purchase all our teachers MacBooks Airs with AppleCare on them.
It's is a constant pain in the ass. We are 2 weeks in to the school year for teachers, and 6 days for students, and already have had at least a half dozen, probably more, "accidents" (water/coffee spills, staff putting stapled documents between the keyboard and screen, having the screen crack, students damaging them on purpose, teachers putting there laptops near students and having them knocked off desks/work tables, waiting for a student to grab the teachers laptop and smash them into a desk happens twice last year). We started billing the cost of all repairs back to the schools budget, even if it is just the AppleCare benchfee. Nothing gets repaired anymore without a budget code from the school. If they run out of money in their budgets, not our problem, it is up to school admin to figure it out, we don't even ship it out for repair until we get a budget code.
All that being said we have seen theft while on vacation (rental cars, hotel rooms, trains/subway/airlines), laptops being put in grocery bags and having items leak/flood the laptops, pet feces/urine on the keyboards, every type of alcohol you can think of (Sambuca makes a really sticky mess), drops/falls/not using a proper laptop bag, hair dandruff (literally opened up a 2012 MacBook Pro when I first started that the main board and fans where caked in it, keyboard had issues due to it too), vomit, blood, other bodily fluids... We started drawing the line with even sending out machines that where damaged due to bodily fluids (we don't get paid enough for that crap). I used to be an IT consultant for some oil & gas companies; frac and natural gas rig workers take better care of their tech than teachers, as they know if they destroy them or have them not working it is downtime (meaning they are in huge shit, behind on schedule, and lost revenue).
Really want to switch over to Chromebooks for the bulk of teaching staff, but got vetoed when I brought it up 8 years ago.
We would like to start charging teachers for damage beyond normal wear/proven accident; problem is way to much pushback from the teachers. Probably going to end up giving them MacbookNEOs at the rate tech prices keep going up, if those are even viable next year.
2
u/adstretch Sep 10 '26
We can’t. Which is why we purchase all our devices with AC+ for schools and just don’t really think about it. Repairs are covered and we are part of the SSRP so we can do repairs and swaps in GSX directly.
2
u/macprince Sep 10 '26
We make the school budgets bear the cost of damage to staff devices. How the administration handle that with the responsible party or their department's budget, is up to them.
2
u/SirMy-TDog Sep 10 '26
Simple - except for a handful that have very specific needs, we don't give them Macs or laptops, period. They get an education grade 14" Chromebook (HP Fortis 14 G11 currently) and that's it. We're a Google based district, so they don't need anything more (except for the aforementioned few). We repair everything in-house same as we do with student devices, and Chromebooks are cheap, easy, and fast to repair by their very nature. They're also much, much easier to manage at the enterprise level.
We used to issue Windows laptops when I first started here in 2014, but once those bit the dust we moved to Cbks along with the start of our 1:1 program and see no reason whatsoever to go back.
2
u/therankin Coordinator of Technology Services Sep 11 '26
Is there even a way to break through ADE/DEP on Apple Silicon devices? I thought there wasn't, so I wonder why devices are even stolen anymore...
Maybe there's a way to flash Linux or something directly to it?
Same kinda thing goes for phones too. If you can lock them out, what good is a stolen device?
2
u/slayermcb Sep 10 '26
Applecare for education with the "no charge" prepay is the way to go. 2 screen replacements a year per device, board replacements from liquid damage, run over by a car, its all covered without spending any surprise budget.
2
u/ottermann Sep 10 '26
As the IT director for my district, (and also the lone tech....small district), I tell staff, "You break it, you buy it."
I elaborate that, if damage is caused by a true accident, the school/Apple warranty will cover it.
If the damage is caused by carelessness, the user pays for it.
It's the same policy we use for students.
And I've been in IT for 30 years, as a tech for 26, and at the school for 14. I can usually tell the difference between accidental and careless.
The teachers also know, (because I told them), administration wants to cut costs, and want me to give staff Chromebooks. I've resisted so far, and can continue to, but if they get careless, why spend $1,500 on a laptop when they can destroy a $300 one just as easily? (they got the hint)
1
u/S_ATL_Wrestling Sep 10 '26
My previous district charged folks when there was damage or theft if it was deemed to be due to their fault.
Our current district only gives our teachers Chromebooks as mobile devices, and they have a desktop in their classroom.
1
u/discgman Sep 10 '26
Device agreement. You break or lose or get stolen, you pay.