As Kaneland students progress through this school year, their Chromebooks are reaching the end of their life span due to constantly being used by all age groups throughout the past three years.
Since their Chromebooks are several years old and already scheduled to be replaced, many students are struggling to use them in school and at home. The battery life is very short, and the technology department receives multiple students a day who are having problems with their devices.
Sophomore Sydney Pohlman has the same Chromebook as the rest of her peers but has taken good care of it over the years. Although she does experience slow internet connections and glitchy websites, her Chromebook is in good condition. The only problem that she faced was when her mouse would disappear on the screen. She took it to the technology department and got the problem easily fixed.
“I’ve never had any problems with it other than my mouse, but that wasn’t my fault,” Pohlman said.
For other students, this isn’t the case. Many are reckless with their devices and do not care for them properly, therefore impacting the state of their Chromebooks now. If they didn’t take care of their Chromebooks over the past three years, their devices are most likely going to be in poor condition and harder for the students to use.
Kaneland District Technician Finnegan Gannon receives about 20 to 30 students experiencing tech issues per school day, and they struggle with minor and major issues related to their Chromebooks. Some common problems that students bring to him and the tech department are battery malfunctions and issues with the touchpad. Gannon says that usually those two are easy fixes that don’t take more than five minutes.
Fortunately, there is a plan moving forward to get the students’ Chromebooks replaced. The tech department has been discussing the process and how it is going to work.
“Recently, we’ve been working on plans to get them replaced in the upcoming school year,” Gannon said. “We usually try to get them all in a box and set up over the summer. So we’re probably going to be doing that this upcoming summer, and students are getting new ones next year.”
There is a lot that goes into this process of replacing Chromebooks throughout the Kaneland district. Director of Technology Tim Wolf has a big role in this process.
First, members from the district’s technology department will go to the school board during the spring time and notify them that they are going to proceed with starting the replacement process. The district’s Board of Education is already aware of this because it is a cycle that the technology department has followed for several years. Next, Wolf will tell the board how many Chromebooks are needed for the whole district and then try to get those ordered by May and receive them around mid June. Then, the tech department starts doing inventory and puts cases on them to assure that they are ready to go for students. Finally, throughout the summer, the devices are delivered to the different buildings and given to the students at the start of the school year.
Although some students do experience poor Wi-Fi and internet connection, Wolf worked for 10 years on building a network throughout Kaneland. He has put a lot of time into creating strong connections throughout the district.
“We have, I would say, about 450 Wi-Fi access points throughout the district,” Wolf said. “I spent 10 years building out a dark fiber network throughout Kaneland so all of our buildings are connected by fiber optics.”
He also explained that every building has a secondary fiber connection that was put in place in case the fiber was cut or tampered with. If something were to go wrong with it, the secondary line would replace it and assure that the connection would not go out.
There is a plan moving forward for Chromebooks in the Kaneland district. Students should expect to have new devices in their hands at the beginning of the 2026-27 school year.
