Many Cal High students have relied on the library’s loaner Chromebooks in case theirs isn’t charged or left at home.
But right before last semester’s finals week in mid-December, the library stopped handing out loaners because there are no more available, frustrating students and teachers.
This practice was initially implemented to provide students with a temporary backup in case they couldn’t use their school-issued Chromebook. It came to an end when the librarians saw students’ consistent failure to return them.
This change mostly brought frustration from some students, but librarian Nicole Ogden explained there just wasn’t enough to go around.
“People did not bring them back,” Ogden said. “It was supposed to be a one day [loan], but people would keep them for months at a time.”
This was a pattern the librarians and administrators noticed that wasn’t getting any better, so they stopped loaning Chromebooks.
“What we’re doing is an admin team is reaching out to those students that have a conversation with them to get an understanding [of what happened to the Chromebooks]” Principal Demetrius Ball said.
Cal still needs to learn what happened to all the loaners before the admin can consider putting the loaner policy back in place.
This decision made things difficult from students who often counted on being able to borrow one in case they couldn’t use theirs. Sophomore Krisha Umashankar thinks it’s unfair to some students that they can’t borrow chromebooks anymore.
“I relied on them whenever I didn’t have one, or it was dead,” Umashankar said. “I know a lot of kids didn’t return them on time, but once in a while a mistake will happen.”
Umashankar thinks since chromebooks are such an essential part of most classes, the loaners were necessary.
Chromebooks are often used in a lot of classes, especially since a lot of assignments are online rather than on paper. Teachers expect students to come to class prepared with their chromebooks charged.
AP Government teacher Brandon Andrews’ class uses chromebooks almost everyday. It’s inconvenient for him when students show up without them but he tries to be understanding in these cases.
“I try to communicate with them when they need the chromebooks,” Andrews said. “I allow them to text friends to borrow theirs, but even that’s irritating because it can take up so much time.”
This new policy is upsetting to some students, but it does reflect the expectation many teachers have for students to come to their classes prepared with their chromebooks.
“It’ll make it harder for everyone to be on the same page if some have access to online material while others don’t.” junior Hannah Ly said.
Class productivity is a concern from teachers and students. A student not having a chromebook could make them fall behind.
Students like junior Lee Mau said this is a natural consequence of some students’ actions, and this could be a good lesson for the future.
“This might inhibit some students from completing work but it also means they develop responsibility over their items,” Mau said.
It’s important that students learn to have more responsibility and readiness for class, this may be a good opportunity for them to realize this.
AP United States History, Honors Modern East Asian History and Intro to Business teacher Chris Doherty’s class also uses chromebooks everyday for assignments and tests, he tries to put emphasis on students remembering their devices. His biggest advice to students is to treat their chromebooks like they would a notebook for that class.
“It’s unfortunate for them that they can’t borrow chromebooks,” Doherty said. “But students should be coming to class prepared.”
The library loaning chromebooks was a relatively new policy, so this was the first time the librarians have had to take this privilege away. And unfortunately for students, loaner chromebooks most likely won’t be brought back in the future because so many were stolen, and the district stopped resupplying them.
“A handful [of chromebooks] have come in, but they’re locked because they’ve all been marked stolen and there’s not enough to really have a full set,” Ogden said. “The district has stopped resupplying them so there’s no replacement chromebooks to have.”
The chromebooks that have come in are marked stolen, so they’re unusable, because they’ve exceeded their due date.
This decision wasn’t made because the school wanted to punish students for not returning the chromebooks on time. While this was a factor, it had more to do with the fact it doesn’t make sense to only loan out a couple of chromebooks since most are unusable.
But students are still hopeful that this privilege will return.
“I think [the loaners] should be brought back maybe in a few years,” Umashankar said.
There may be a new option in coming years for students that need chromebooks.
“The goal is to come up with a new solution at each site,” Ogden said. “Our admin team will get together with all the department heads and figure out another option that we can have instead of the library checking [chromebooks]out to students.”
Admin hasn’t decided to remove this policy forever, and just like students, they do want to one day bring back this system or something similar.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to recover enough to have that luxury of issuing loaners in the future,” Ball said.
So in the meantime, students are encouraged to double check that they have their chromebooks in their bags everyday. The library may come up with some alternatives to the loaner chromebook crisis in coming years, but for the rest of this year, students won’t have that option.