Kat Piantka | Newsroom Manager & Gabby Miller | Writer
September 6, 2024
With each year, the growing awareness of faulty and inconsistent school Chromebooks has progressed as they continue to break throughout the school year and prove unreliable. However, some members of the classes of 2027 and 2028 were given new Chromebooks at the start of their freshman year. In contrast, the upperclassmen have dealt with this technology since the beginning of sixth grade. Junior Rylee Kervick advocates that these Chromebooks “should be on their way out” and that new technology will help promote a positive change in the education of upperclassmen.
This growing issue has led to an uprising in students bringing their personal computers to school. Unfortunately, many students do not have access to better technology and many teachers oppose students bringing their devices to the classroom setting. Common issues found in these expiring Chromebooks are broken keyboards, delayed response times, and failure to maintain battery life. Junior Catherine Golles complains that they “fail to work 90% of the time” leading to “unnecessary time constraints” due to their unreliability when certainly needed. Such as during timed writing when a highly functional keyboard is essential to success or during tests when Chromebooks fail to load the next question effectively. These chronic problems are jeopardizing students constantly. Students can trade in their faulty Chromebook for a ‘new’ one with Chromebook insurance yet the replacements are often not much better.
The district and San Clemente High School surely have enough money to fund new Chromebooks as money is often carelessly spent towards school dances, spirit assemblies, and other sporting events with declining student participation. Instead, this money could be used to support the education of SCHS students. Some students have become so desperate that they have started secretly stealing teachers’ Chromebooks, leading to numerous teachers losing nearly 50% of their Chromebook inventory. One can infer that this issue will only worsen, as Chromebook quality continues declining each year.
Sophomore Annabelle Strutton is a proud owner of one of these new and improved Chromebooks rather than one that needs to be updated and is overused. Strutton emphasizes how much she relies on this device as she is not fortunate enough to “have a personal computer.” These new Chromebooks were a game changer as she could rely on them to “hold a charge and [they] can complete the tasks [she] needs…in and out of class”, allowing her to focus more on the assignments at hand rather than these dysfunctional products. Many underclassmen do not realize how advantageous new Chromebooks are to their academic success. Meanwhile, upperclassmen will face daily difficulties finding new ways to avoid the rising issue of the school’s failure to provide better technology for all.
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