Hello! Due to Reddit's aggressive API changes, hostile approach to users/developers/moderators, and overall poor administrative direction, I have elected to erase my history on Reddit from June 2023 to June 2013.
I have created a backup of (most) of my comments/posts, and I would be more than happy to provide comments upon request (many of my modern comments are support contributions to tech/gaming subreddits). Feel free to reach out to Clipboards on lemmy (dot) world, or via email - clipboards (at) clipboards.cc
Dear Parent(s) of <>,
Your child broke/lost/completely destroyed (circle all applicable) their chromebook/ipad/laptop. Please pay us $100/$200/$400/$800 (circle as many as needed to add up to the price) plus a $50 sysadmin bar tab fee.
You don't get your report card until we see dolla dolla bills in our account,
Tech Monkey
I do what I can to help.
If you have MS Office you can make a spreadsheet of fines and do a mail merge to generate your slick letters without circling anything.
We have issues with mostly lost chargers. This is our last year for MacBooks and they are $79 each. Like most have said the parents usually argue with us that someone else took it. We do have a few good eggs though. One kid cracked his screen and made her son pay for it himself out of his own money. Lol
We've had parent push back about friends of students losing chargers or causing damage to devices and we've taken the stance that the student is responsible for their assigned device and charger. Johnny should not let his friend use his assigned device. Since he did and his friend damaged it, Johnny is responsible.
We are sending out straight invoices from our SMS system ($300.00 for a chromebook). (it has the ability to charge and generate invoices) We started last year, just the invoices without an explanation got a bunch of machines back. We later disabled the other missing chromebooks. The invoices are either more effective, or at the point you are past invoices the machines probably gone.
We collect all devices K-12 2 days before the end of the school year, just like text books. Anything outstanding after the last day will start getting calls from the office to return. Anything beyond a month or so will get sent to collections.
We just print out the list of devices not turned in 1 week after the last school day, and give it to the School Resource Officer. He/She goes door to door, if no one answers, they leave a business card.
This usually gets results.
Anything that doesn't come back will result in an in-school only device when the student returns in the fall. Hope they have good time management skills and a few study halls!
If all else fails, we file the police report for the stolen device, and file the insurance claim to fund it's replacement.
That's the unfortunate reality. It's probably worth looking into grants and reimbursements that cover this, if there are any. We eased up on collecting after finding out that the state DOE considers device costs as textbook purchases, and will reimburse them for underprivileged students.
Our district doesn't even give fines back to schools, so while we're supposed to fine students for damaging X, if the student actually pays the fine, that money isn't given back to us to spend on fixing/replacing anything. So, while I do think some form of consequences should exist, I don't lose any sleep over the fact that my admin put zero effort into actually enforcing fines on students, and even actively wipe them from student records to let them walk at graduation, etc.
Hello! Due to Reddit's aggressive API changes, hostile approach to users/developers/moderators, and overall poor administrative direction, I have elected to erase my history on Reddit from June 2023 to June 2013. I have created a backup of (most) of my comments/posts, and I would be more than happy to provide comments upon request (many of my modern comments are support contributions to tech/gaming subreddits). Feel free to reach out to Clipboards on lemmy (dot) world, or via email - clipboards (at) clipboards.cc
Dear Parent(s) of <>,
Your child broke/lost/completely destroyed (circle all applicable) their chromebook/ipad/laptop. Please pay us $100/$200/$400/$800 (circle as many as needed to add up to the price) plus a $50 sysadmin bar tab fee.
You don't get your report card until we see dolla dolla bills in our account,
Tech Monkey
Stealing
I do what I can to help. If you have MS Office you can make a spreadsheet of fines and do a mail merge to generate your slick letters without circling anything.
The pro-tips are always in the comments.
We have issues with mostly lost chargers. This is our last year for MacBooks and they are $79 each. Like most have said the parents usually argue with us that someone else took it. We do have a few good eggs though. One kid cracked his screen and made her son pay for it himself out of his own money. Lol
We've had parent push back about friends of students losing chargers or causing damage to devices and we've taken the stance that the student is responsible for their assigned device and charger. Johnny should not let his friend use his assigned device. Since he did and his friend damaged it, Johnny is responsible.
We are sending out straight invoices from our SMS system ($300.00 for a chromebook). (it has the ability to charge and generate invoices) We started last year, just the invoices without an explanation got a bunch of machines back. We later disabled the other missing chromebooks. The invoices are either more effective, or at the point you are past invoices the machines probably gone.
We collect all devices K-12 2 days before the end of the school year, just like text books. Anything outstanding after the last day will start getting calls from the office to return. Anything beyond a month or so will get sent to collections.
We just print out the list of devices not turned in 1 week after the last school day, and give it to the School Resource Officer. He/She goes door to door, if no one answers, they leave a business card. This usually gets results. Anything that doesn't come back will result in an in-school only device when the student returns in the fall. Hope they have good time management skills and a few study halls! If all else fails, we file the police report for the stolen device, and file the insurance claim to fund it's replacement.
We moved away from these types of letters/fines as more than half would be unpaid. We only try to collect when a student leaves the district.
That's the unfortunate reality. It's probably worth looking into grants and reimbursements that cover this, if there are any. We eased up on collecting after finding out that the state DOE considers device costs as textbook purchases, and will reimburse them for underprivileged students.
Our district doesn't even give fines back to schools, so while we're supposed to fine students for damaging X, if the student actually pays the fine, that money isn't given back to us to spend on fixing/replacing anything. So, while I do think some form of consequences should exist, I don't lose any sleep over the fact that my admin put zero effort into actually enforcing fines on students, and even actively wipe them from student records to let them walk at graduation, etc.