I just read about an elementary student who organized a walk-a-thon in an effort to raise money to replace aging computers at his school. When I review our inventories, I see that most of the equipment we have is more than four years old. What is a reasonable time span for a replacement cycle in schools?
Businesses generally replace computers every two to three years. Few schools can afford to do this, although in districts where equipment leasing is permissible, this cycle is possible to achieve. This is because leases can be written to allow schools to replace a certain percentage of the equipment each year.
However, if you cannot enter into a lease, you need to think about replacing computers that are more than four years old. Why? In addition to becoming increasingly expensive to maintain, older computers often cannot run new software programs or access the Internet efficiently.
Submitted by: Susan Brooks-Young
