• Surp@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    edit-2
    3 days ago

    A 50 inch flat screen school price is like 150$ one time deal. I’m only just saying…not saying I think teachers pay is fine because its not.

    • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      3 days ago

      It’s the same logic as “why do homeless people have phones?”. it’s a one time purchase. It’s not going to cover ongoing rent.

      But yeah, also a problem.

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        3 days ago

        Not really a good comparison. In modern times, a smart phone is a basic necessity and can be that persons only connection to their friends, family and work opportunities. A digital sign in the lobby of a school doesn’t hold nearly the same utility.

          • Glytch@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            3 days ago

            No one here said they weren’t. You seemed to imply that a phone was a luxury and not a necessity and got corrected.

    • MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      3 days ago

      ITT: People not understanding staffing costs. $150 barely covers the cost of a substitute teacher for one day

      (At least it used to, ten years ago my sister was a sub and she’d make a little over a hundred a day doing that, it may or may not still be enough)

    • Snoopey@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      3 days ago

      “flat screen tv” how old is this meme, significantly cheaper than curved screens these days hah

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      3 days ago

      Not in the 00’s when I went to high school. It was for some alt education program that never happen, so who knows how much background cost there was that was wasted.

      Also, to many poor schools always seem to fine the funds for their after school sports programs

    • x00z@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      3 days ago

      I also think some of these purchases are done “because they need to spend money”. You can’t really spend a lot of money on food in one.

  • HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    66
    ·
    4 days ago

    I’ve heard that some grant money is earmarked to be spent in stupid ways. “Here’s $2M for technology” means they can put a Threadripper on every desk, but not replace the desk, or the 30-year-old textbooks within it.

    I’m surprised there aren’t an ecosystem of crooked vendors that know ways to help cashout such grants. Buy these garbage PCs for $1000 each, and we have a “surplus trade in programme” to buy them back for $600 cash each in 3 months, giving you no-longer-restricted cash to actually fix the hole in the cafeteria floor that’s already swallowed Mrs Baxter’s third grade class"

    • rtxn@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      Most grants I’ve seen require that you keep the devices for a specific time (5-10 years generally, probably depends on region). Our storage space is full of long outdated tech that we can’t toss or use in any realistic capacity.

  • papalonian@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    39
    ·
    3 days ago

    It’s not just in education.

    Retail pharmacy. My company ~2 years ago decided to start offering clinical services to patients - great! In my store, they walled off part of what used to be the stockroom, expanding our waiting area and giving us a dedicated vaccination room (previously in a sectioned off part of the waiting room) and a health care room (where all the new services went).

    To support these new services we got all kinds of really fancy tech - 20 inch 1440p (?) touchscreens for check-in. Very high end blood pressure machines. Two (2) computers in the healthcare room for the one (1) healthcare provider, because, you never know. These changes can be seen in a majority of this company’s stores.

    If you haven’t guessed by now, they’ve decided to not go through with those clinical services. All of the tech we bought (if I had to estimate, very conservatively, $15k USD for my store) is either reboxed or installed but powered off on the sales floor, has been for ~12-18 months, and has no plans of ever being repurposed or sold. The vaccination room serves zero additional purpose to the area we had before, and the “healthcare room” is now used as the pharmacy stockroom (since, y’know, they removed part of the stockroom to build it). This is all ignoring the money spent on actually building these rooms (with lighting and climate control nicer than the rest of the store) and profits lost during construction.

    But we don’t have enough money for raises, or enough hours to functionally staff the pharmacy 🙃

  • BossDj@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    3 days ago

    Schools everywhere are replacing projectors with tvs because projector bulbs can be upwards of $200 replaced every other year (not counting those absent minded teachers who leave their projector on overnight); and the cost is rising. TV prices, for their lifespan, cost less than replacing bulbs and the price is dropping. Projectors also have double the energy usage and generate heat.

    As for teachers only using them as welcome screens, I don’t know. More grant money toward training and resources instead?

    • chuckleslord@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      3 days ago

      My guess is that this is talking about flat screens used in common areas for announcements and whatnot. Not screens in rooms.

    • GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      3 days ago

      Also, the finance department going “what do you mean a screen needs a consumable?!”

      We’re looking at swapping the conference room projector for a screen now. £200 bulb, £600 for a mahoosive TV that’s much brighter.

    • TriflingToad
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      3 days ago

      this is the answer unfortunately. “Updating our schools technology to the modern age” sounds a lot better on our governors resume than “gave the dirty kids soap in the bathroom again”
      we genuinely haven’t had soap in the dispensers in a few of the bathrooms for months :/

    • Batmancer
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      3 days ago

      Exactly. I wanted to say at my last job that was education based and worked in schools but not for the school district directly. My supervisors and the district would ask if there was anything the team needed. I would always lead with raises and incentives for the clients but they would straight up tell me that they can only get me things that would fall under technology and electronic aid equipment and to try to think of anything that could qualify. They gave me a laptop that I didn’t want and never used, the office did get a ps4 and Xbox one for the kids to play(I beat so many at risk teens at UFC) but we were able to get better mileage reimbursement from .50 to .65

  • urheber@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    my old School got a glass Tunnel for 20 meters one year after i left, mY current School has so little money we had 3 hours a day, for 2 weeks because one teacher is sick. Nonetheless we still have 1 of these unusable “smartboards” for every 1.5 rooms or so. This is Germany btw

      • Mirshe@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        3 days ago

        My guess is they never ran power drops for them, or they never taught teachers how to use them. Happens a lot - “hey we got cool new tech, but the grant is hyper-specific that it has to be spent on new tech, NOT training for that new tech.”

  • LANIK2000@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    3 days ago

    My school back in the day used its funds to teardown the old huge playset and replace it with an even bigger caged football/basketball field. Needless to say, we went out a lot less during lunch hours since.

  • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    3 days ago

    Yours got used as a sign? I remember big screens being install in one of the back rooms for some alt education program that never actually happened. This was in the 00’s, so those screens were not cheap.

  • hogmomma@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    3 days ago

    The money that’s used to pay teachers’ salaries doesn’t come from the same funding as these TVs would. This isn’t really a fair comparison.