Minnesota school districts turn to students to help fix growing backlog of broken laptops

Ajulo Awow's summer gig involves sorting through towering stacks of school-issued Chromebooks, all awaiting her fix-it skills.

She is one of four teens hired by the South Washington County school district to help with thousands of tech repairs.

"This is way better than working at Pizza Hut," Awow, 18, said while leaning over the motherboard of one of about 50 laptops she works on each day in a Cottage Grove warehouse. "I've learned so much. And we're helping the schools."

The pandemic dramatically accelerated the number of districts that provide laptops or iPads for each student in the scramble to get them devices for distance learning. But putting thousands of computers in students' hands and backpacks brought about a new conundrum: How could districts keep all of those devices up-to-date and in working order?

Outsourcing all repairs — sometimes as simple as replacing a cracked screen or a broken key on the keyboard — can be costly and inefficient for schools, with devices out of commission for several weeks. That has led some districts to seek an in-house solution by training and tapping their own students.

In South Washington County, the gig offers teens hands-on work experience and pays between $10.59 and $14.15 per hour, depending on whether they've graduated. It also benefits the school district, which had a backlog of about 2,000 devices that needed a fix over the summer. With the extra help, leaders of the district's tech department say they are "way ahead" of where they were last year in preparing the laptops for fall classes.

"We're one of the new solutions for the growing problem," said Josh Raboin, 18, and a recent graduate of Park High School in Cottage Grove.

"I'm not going to name names, but there was someone who turned in a Chromebook with peanut butter and jelly residue all over it," said Carson Macynski, a rising senior at Woodbury High and another student working with South Washington County schools. "So that's also what we deal with."

'Hidden talent' among students

Robbinsdale Area Schools also recently employed students to keep devices up and running.

"There's a lot of hidden talent in the student body," said Joel Mehring, the assistant director of technology.

Mehring hopes to expand the repair class and employment opportunities in the tech department so students can get more experience in troubleshooting and critical thinking — key skills for any job, not just those in IT, he said.

Westonka first began providing Chromebooks to some students in 2012. When screens broke, Simonson — who was then the district's tech integrationist — remembers boxing up the devices, shipping them to Texas for $150 per repair, then having to wait for six weeks before they were returned. Once she started the course, she realized that most of those repairs took about 10 minutes and less than $40 in parts.

"I had so many people ask me, 'You're actually letting kids do all of these repairs?' Simonson said. "And I said 'Of course. They are the best resource we have.' "

Sarah Carter, the STEM/computer science specialist at the Minnesota Department of Education, said even before the pandemic, districts that provided a laptop or tablet for each student were turning to their high school students to keep up with repairs. And more such programs have popped up in recent years, often because of partnerships between districts and IT companies or device manufacturers. A handful of districts are even having students staff a kind of "geek squad" desk where peers and teachers can bring devices for repair, Carter said.

"Computer science education, in general, is growing as a content area that is essential for all students to know," she said. "Now we need to make sure there is more equitable access to these opportunities across the state."

Tech workforce training

About 30 schools nationally, including the four high schools in South Washington County, have used the curriculum, which costs about $3,000. Vivacity has already hired a handful of students who completed the course.

"We feel that investing in this can help show students that there are great tech opportunities out there, which is important to supporting all levels of the workforce," said Sandy Johnson, Vivacity's director of marketing.

Back in the warehouse in Cottage Grove, Awow chatted with her co-workers about her own goals. The 2023 graduate of South Washington Alternative High School plans to study computer science at Dunwoody College of Technology in the fall. She's confident her experience will give her a leg up as she starts classes.