This is one of the many disadvantages of empowering a strong executive that can overrule the internal specialists. There are also lots of disadvantages of weak executive models of governance too, mostly around stagnation and adherence to the status quo...
Chicago auctioning away its parking revenue for 75 years for a mere $1.6B was a far bigger mistake and curse upon the public. At least the chromebooks have a far shorter lifetime
IDK, not having to worry about wifi, about if the ISP bill was paid, if the signal reaches their room, if they can do their school work while away from home, at a grandparents, etc. etc. Seems like an expensive but worthwhile call.
> and for up to one million lines of cell service for those and other school-issued laptops and tablets, according to contract documents reviewed by New York Focus
One million lines of cellular service for 800,000 students.
It’s a good idea to enable cellular service for those who don’t have adequate access at home. The majority of people don’t fit this description, though. As the article says, only about 1/8th of the students surveyed could be categorized as having inadequate access.
Somebody pushed a huge contract and got it, even though the service wasn’t needed at this scale. WiFi Chromebooks by default with a cellular option for the students who needed it would have saved a lot of recurring cellular contract charges.
I would 100% support prosecuting the people responsible for wasting public funds. This is the kind of abuse that undermines trust in the state, and make it difficult to provide things to people that actually need them. The Adams administration is a disgrace.
I hope the students can choose to use their own wifi at home if they have it, much better service for them. Depending on how it's setup, the cellular contract may be not be that crippling. When enterprises buy thousands of services they pool data across the SIM's and get quite reasonable rates for what is used, be it a fleet of IOT devices with low usage or laptops with some high usage. If you are just buying one service, you are really at a disadvantage compared to enterprise deals.
How about we just give their entire families Internet access for free?
Fios js something like $75/mo for gigabit Ethernet (inclusive of a WiFi router, etc) and there are smaller gigabit providers that will give you service for under $50. And with bulk contracts I’m sure the govt could get a better price than even that.
If the govt can negotiate a rate of about $25/mo it could provide all 800k students homes high quality internet.
But only about 115k are estimated to have insufficient internet access so at $50/month, you can provide (let’s round up to 150k students) all their families internet access for $90mm as opposed to the $200mm they’re currently paying.
Nevermind. The article states the city has gotten Spectrum to agree to $15/mo service. So providing every student’s family free internet service would cost the city $160mm. You would still save well over 20% before considering the hardware cost savings by not having to buy LTE.
Unsurprising. Corruption, wasted tax money, violence, crime, etc are everywhere and all of us apathetic voters just look the other way a little more each day. We reap what we sow, we must lie in the beds we've made.
I don't think Chromebooks are good computers for kids to learn on. They may learn how to use a browser and a relatively-closed ecosystem of dumbed down apps, but they won't learn working with a real OS, much less tinkering or experimenting with it. What's wrong with normal laptops running a Linux distro? You can always reinstall if the kid messes with the OS too much.
What is the reason given for Chromebooks being used so much in US schools? Is it just Google having a good sales team?
They could do better than this I’m sure, but I don’t know what this number actually should be.
Since COVID the city has had to ensure students can attend school remotely. A number of students in the city don’t have reliable internet connections at home (indeed some are homeless) so an alternative is needed.
I imagine it’s very difficult to guarantee you’ve reached out to ensure every kid has internet access. Send a form home? A bunch of disengaged parents won’t fill it out. How you support a student whose parent does absolutely nothing to help is a perennial problem in schools. This at least guarantees everyone has access.
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[ 0.14 ms ] story [ 31.6 ms ] threadChicago auctioning away its parking revenue for 75 years for a mere $1.6B was a far bigger mistake and curse upon the public. At least the chromebooks have a far shorter lifetime
https://www.npr.org/2025/12/12/nx-s1-5642708/chicago-parking...
One million lines of cellular service for 800,000 students.
It’s a good idea to enable cellular service for those who don’t have adequate access at home. The majority of people don’t fit this description, though. As the article says, only about 1/8th of the students surveyed could be categorized as having inadequate access.
Somebody pushed a huge contract and got it, even though the service wasn’t needed at this scale. WiFi Chromebooks by default with a cellular option for the students who needed it would have saved a lot of recurring cellular contract charges.
Fios js something like $75/mo for gigabit Ethernet (inclusive of a WiFi router, etc) and there are smaller gigabit providers that will give you service for under $50. And with bulk contracts I’m sure the govt could get a better price than even that.
If the govt can negotiate a rate of about $25/mo it could provide all 800k students homes high quality internet.
But only about 115k are estimated to have insufficient internet access so at $50/month, you can provide (let’s round up to 150k students) all their families internet access for $90mm as opposed to the $200mm they’re currently paying.
Nevermind. The article states the city has gotten Spectrum to agree to $15/mo service. So providing every student’s family free internet service would cost the city $160mm. You would still save well over 20% before considering the hardware cost savings by not having to buy LTE.
What is the reason given for Chromebooks being used so much in US schools? Is it just Google having a good sales team?
Since COVID the city has had to ensure students can attend school remotely. A number of students in the city don’t have reliable internet connections at home (indeed some are homeless) so an alternative is needed.
I imagine it’s very difficult to guarantee you’ve reached out to ensure every kid has internet access. Send a form home? A bunch of disengaged parents won’t fill it out. How you support a student whose parent does absolutely nothing to help is a perennial problem in schools. This at least guarantees everyone has access.