Large School District Keeps Student and Teacher Laptops Up and Running

About the Client

The customer was a large K-12 school district in Virginia. Serving both urban and rural communities, the district has an ongoing mission to provide every student with equitable access to meaningful learning experiences and technology to support their learning. As part of this mission, each student needed a school-issued laptop for use at school that could also be brought home.

The school district’s Windows device service provider was not keeping pace with the day-to-day repair and replacement demands posed by its 70 member schools. All too often, students with malfunctioning Windows devices were being sent back to class without a laptop while awaiting repairs, leaving them unable to participate in the learning experience.

The district needed a laptop provider that could ensure that no student would have to be without a device during the school year. It needed a provider that could handle all laptop repairs and/or replacements immediately with zero interruptions to students’ learning experience.

Xerox^® IT Services, in partnership with two device manufacturers, created a custom plan to provide Chromebooks to some 50,000 students as well as Windows laptops to 3,000 teachers districtwide.

A key capability for meeting the district’s device repair needs was Xerox’s extensive image and break fix center, which provided school IT officials with a firsthand view of repair technicians in action. To further ensure continuous service, Xerox also created a 5% stockpile of spare parts at its warehouse on day one and provided each school with 60 backup devices for immediate swap outs as needed.

Xerox replaced the district’s devices over the summer and rolled out laptops to all students at the start of the school year with no interruptions to classes. It continues to maintain all devices with no downtime.

The Challenge

Handling 250 damaged devices a day

With more than 50,000 K-12 students in 70 schools, this large, geographically spread-out school district faced a daily challenge to its commitment to provide every student with continuous access to school-issued laptops essential to their meaningful learning experience. Its students were submitting some 250 damaged devices in need of repair every day across the district.

The company supplying and maintaining Windows devices for its teachers and students was not able to keep up with that demand without delays. As a result, students with malfunctioning laptops had to be sent back to class without a device, leaving them unable to participate in class while waiting for repairs. Not only were the deviceless students left out of ongoing lessons, they also often became a distraction to fellow students in the process sparking teacher and parent complaints

The prospect of replacing the current laptop service provider and more than 50,000 devices posed another challenge. The shift needed to be made smoothly during the summer without disrupting the start of the new school year and with support on hand to handle any transition concerns when students returned.

The Solution

A custom deployment and repair strategy

Xerox^® IT Services offered a solution to the laptop lag dilemma. It partnered with two PC manufacturers to come up with a custom plan to not only replace the district’s devices on time and on-budget, but also to provide daily repair/replacement services with zero interruptions to students’ learning time.

The repair plan featured:

• The capabilities of Xerox’s extensive image and break fix center to handle device repairs as well as device inspections and refurbishments over the summer.

• A 5% stockpile of manufacturer spare parts stored in Xerox’s warehouse to avoid shortages and repair slowdowns.

• A swap-out supply of 60 spare devices per school to be continuously maintained. While the plan continued to provide Windows devices to the district’s 3000 teachers, it shifted students to more affordable and more easily deployed Chromebooks.

The Results

Years of uninterrupted service

Xerox^® IT Services removed existing devices; imaged, deployed and configured the new laptops; and repacked, grouped and delivered them according to the district’s time and space requirements. The Xerox team delivered the 53,000 devices in two months over the summer and members were on hand to provide support at the start of the school year when devices were handed out to students over a two-day period.

The daily device repair strategy proved 100% effective. The district has not had to have a single student sent back to class without a working device in five years of working with Xerox. Its devices are collected, inspected, repaired, and refreshed over the summer and returned in “like-new” condition for the start of each school year.

Every three years, Xerox handles a full technology refresh in which all devices are replaced with new ones.

Despite the high demands of keeping devices up and running in the hands of demanding users from kindergarten to high school, this Virginia school district is succeeding at fulfilling its mission of providing students with equitable access to technology that supports their learning.

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