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“PC” School District Sends Macs to the Scrap Heap

By Nicole Martinelli (11:59 am, Aug 10 2009)

Photo used with a CC-license. Thanks to Chris Corwin on Flickr.

Photo used with a CC-license. Thanks to Chris Corwin on Flickr.

An elementary school in Sarasota, Florida is sending several hundred working Macs to the trash heap — in keeping with the school district’s “PC-only” policy.

Piled up in the cafeteria of the Emma Booker school, 140 G3 and G4 laptops and over 50 iMac and eMac machines await the scrap heap.

An account in the local paper takes on dramatic overtones:

Sarasota County Public School system employees who alerted the Pelican Press to the salvage effort asked not to be identified because they feared retribution. “All of the machines are still working,” said one. “The teachers asked if they could buy them or give them to the kids. We were told, ‘No.’”

Putting the Macs out to pasture is the result of a decision by Superintendent Gary Norris, who headed the school system from 2004-2008, who declared the school system would be PC-only, the paper said.

Even the county school district’s program that donates computers to needy kids, called Texcellence, is a Mac-free zone.

“We’ve never used Macs,”  foundation spokeswoman Laura Breeze told Pelican Press. The group recently received 1,100 used PC computers and is refurbishing them and adding software before giving them out.

At a time when budgets are tight, you have to wonder why a school district would send working computers to the scrap heap.

36 comments »

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nicole_martinelli

Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco native who has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek. You can find her on Twitter , Facebook and Google+.

If you're doing something new/cool that's Apple related, email her about it.

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  • Jay Floyd

    Good eye, Nicole. There’s more to this story.

  • MichalM.Mac

    Sending G4 to Scrap ? What a waste. Many people would take them or even buy them and put them to good use….

  • Roland

    Sending anything that is still working to the scrap heap is stupid, a damage to the environment and a bad example for future generations – especially as an educational institution and especially as it seems, that there are people who’d really be happy about an old, but working machine.

    Doesn’t look like there are many good things to learn at that school, except for dutifulness towards a system of bureaucracy and ignorance.

  • http://www.snubcommunications.com Craig Grannell

    As bad as it is for schools to scrap old computers when budgets are tight, it’s utterly despicable that working machines are being trashed rather than given away. Utterly disgusting from Emma Booker school.

  • http://www.diarmy.net Diarmaid O Conchubhair

    Is there not a Competition Authority or something that should stop this? Surely this is creating a Microsoft monopoly in the district? I know that here in Ireland if this was tried (if) there would be European and Irish laws in place to stop the creation of an artificial monopoly.

    I cannot believe that anyone would allow this to go on without asking a question or two about the motivations of the Superintendent.

    There must be some law broken here.

  • http://www.fscked.co.uk Richard Gaywood

    Here in the UK, if any organisation disposes of equipment like that — even for free — they are liable for any problems that result. If a faulty computer electrocutes someone to death, that can be a lot of money. Are the laws similar in the US?

    Because if so the school is choosing is the sensible option in disposing of the kit. To insure against the risk, and PAT test all that equipment would be much more than a collection of beatup G3 and G4 Macs can possibly be worth.

  • Cam

    All I can say is, “Hey, it’s Florida! What would you expect?”

  • Rick

    The rules are different here.

  • Alex Bratu

    I second the, “hey, it’s Florida” remark. What more would you expect from a state that went through the Bush vote debacle and a state that allows crooked companies to exist free of litigation laws.

  • beertje

    Question who is Gary Norris? What is his past?
    Did he work for IBM? Or is he involved with Microsoft?
    Little bit weird action to remove all Macs even working Macs!

  • Lucas

    to answer the question from the overseas folks, no I don’t believe there is any law that prohibits a school, school district or even government body from picking one or the other at the exclusion of the competition.

    as for this gig. I am mainly shocked that they didn’t recycle them. I hope their local trash sorts e-waste. but yes it is a pity that they couldn’t find a way to donate/sell them.

  • compufix

    We sell all our replaced and outdated equipment on Ebay, the money can then be put back into budget and used on our things.

    We are a dual platform institution, but our student computers are 90% Macs, but our backend is 99% Windows Servers. It’s doable, very doable, for people with open minds, that have a vision, and have a tech department that know what they are doing….all of which seem to be missing here. Go figure… there is definitely more to this story and it usually involves a book smart, MS tested and certified Network Manager that has no clue and not willing to expand their horizons. If they decided to look into how much money they saved in using those G4′s over time, they would see that the ROI is way more than anything else they can buy. FUD strikes again.

  • Scott

    I used to work at a campus where they threw out Macs. They gave me a white iBook nobody wanted. It works perfectly and I’ve been using it every day for several years now… (satisfied smile)

  • Adam

    The district where I attended went pc-only my junior year in high school. Some of my friends had “mac throwing” contests to see how far they could throw them out the window. All of them were just trashed.
    It made me sad because at the time I would have loved a G4 mac, or even a g3 iBook and was even willing to pay for one from the school to avoid the shipping costs of getting one online.

  • dinehjoe

    As a low end mac user, I find this story disturbing and I hope and pray they are saved and are used by someone who needs a computer. I myself wouldn’t mind one of these macs, how sad.

  • Mike

    As a tech consultant, I worked for a LARGE school district in New York that did precisely this with about 5000 similar computers.

    The district was changing to PC from mac, and originally planned to use the old macs as thin client devices connecting to a Citrix back-end. Increasing hardware issues caused the district to evaluate the cost of replacing all the Macs with $500 PCs. (Cost of a motherboard (or even an HD), plus repair time on an old mac could easily be several hundred dollars)

    Left with the issue of what to do with the macs, the district had several choices:
    – leave them in place with Mac software, and continue to support both platforms. Problems: Increasing the number of computers, with out increasing the size of the tech-support team would decrease the the quality of support available district-wide. Maintaining both platforms means doubling software licensing costs. Not enough network drops in classrooms to increase number of networked computers without significant cost to expand network infrastructure.
    – Remove the macs and attempt to sell them via ebay or other similar auction.
    Problem: The district planned on transferring software licenses to the new PC platform. In order to comply with software licensing agreements, the district would be responsible for wiping ALL software from the computer and re-installing the OS. The cost associated with the increased technician time far outweighed the value of the old computers.
    – Donate the computers to the community. Problem: Same issues with software licensing, plus worries about support liabilities
    – Use a not for-profit organization to accept the donation. Problem: almost all of these organizations only accept PCs. We found a for-profit organization that would charge a nominal fee to accept the macs, and stated that “where possible” the computers would be recycled and donated. Most likely all the computers ended up in a trash heap somewhere on the other side of the world. The district was VERY careful not to put any computers in district dumpsters for fear of ending up in a news paper article like this one.

    The point is, the issue is not as cut and dry as the article makes it sound. We are not talking about 1 or 2 year old computers. Most of the equipment talked about here is at least 5+ years old. Although they may have been good for some people, allowing this to happen would have actually cost the district (and the tax-payers) money.

  • Nicole

    I think it’s ridiculous that they’re throwing away perfectly good machines. Many people would be willing to pay good money for a second-hand computer for various reasons.

    At my brother’s school (a private, Pre-K through 8th school) they recently decided to upgrade all of the computers, so they sold the old ones for around $50. Many people jumped at the chance to buy them. Some wanted a machine for the kids to play around on, others passed on the word to those they knew couldn’t afford a brand new one. In the end, a lot of people were able to snag a working computer for an affordable price and the school was able to raise a bit of money in the process.

    I hope the teachers or those in the neighborhood have enough sense to snatch those computers out of the garbage dump if possible. Give them to some families who may not be able to have a computer otherwise.

  • Peruchito

    i need to raid that junk heap

  • Calvin

    My school did that last year with all the eMacs and a few PowerMacs in the art department. I convinced my drama teachertp ask for a PowerMac and that’s how he got his first Mac. He’s bought two others already :D

  • Tim H.

    And they say mac users are fanatics. Likely a combination of IT people who won’t learn another system and chamber of commerce types who think mac users won’t be able to learn windows.

  • JG

    I’ve used computers for nearly 40 years now. Started with mainframes, then minis, then the first microprocessor PCs, then finally the IBM PC and others including Macs. I have some perspective on costs and usability of computer platforms – I’ve used nearly every make and model of computer that’s existed in that time period.

    Today my company uses only Macs for the simple reason they radically reduce IT costs and improve worker productivity – I’m old-fashioned I suppose in that I believe in cost control and productivity enhancement both in the short term but also in the long term. We even do the development of the Windows XP versions of our software products on Macs – our R&D staff is more productive at lower cost. We’ve measured it.

    I’ve worked in Fortune 20 companies to SMEs to start-ups; government to non-profit to commercial entities. In general, IT groups in organizations are more about empire building than they are about achieving organization mission. This pretty much smells like the same old story. The arcane complexity of Windows suits empire builders well.

    If some back-water part of the country wants to disadvantage their own kids more than they already are by 1) reducing productivity, and 2) increasing costs thus crowding out other programs on a fixed budget, that’s their right. It’s foolish and short-sighted but it’s their choice. The world needs people who flip burgers I suppose.

  • Angel Santiago

    what kind of people is who decided “PC” ONLY …… WTF !!!!!!

  • Gary Harrison

    Hi All,
    I wrote the school system (a polite!) letter inquiring about this, and here is their response (in part):
    —–
    The Mac computers at Emma E Booker Elementary School that were the subject of the story will be assessed for possible refurbishing and donation to families. Those which are not able to be refurbished due to their age or inadequate specifications will be removed by a computer recycling company that has been identified as one of several computer recycling firms in the state on the Web site of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. While we used to auction off old computer equipment, we found that some of the items would be disposed of improperly. We do not want to contribute to the environmental problem of e-waste, so we no longer auction off old computers and peripherals, but we do try to find them a “new home” whenever feasible.
    —-
    Just an FYI!
    Gary

  • Core

    I live in FLORIDA I really could you a mac-THANKS ALOT

  • http://dzine-studios.com Dan

    My school is an art-based school, so it still has quite a few Macs. However the school was about to throw away several Blue & White G3′s. Now the G3 can still run Tiger, and can be upgraded to 4gb of RAM easily, so I jumped on the chance to get one. The school wouldn’t let me have it, so the day before they were to be dismantled and thrown away, I snuck one out. So now I have a nice G3 purring in my room :)

  • http://peterstory.zxq.net Peter Story

    This makes me SICK.

  • Jeff Wilson

    Fist off, this story isn’t factual. They’re not being thown in the trash. The doesn’t even look like it came from any school let alone this school. When was the last time you saw a school have one small trash can and not a dumpster.

    I don’t know who this previous poster, but Gary’s post is worth reading. Here it is.

    Hi All,
    I wrote the school system (a polite!) letter inquiring about this, and here is their response (in part):
    —–
    The Mac computers at Emma E Booker Elementary School that were the subject of the story will be assessed for possible refurbishing and donation to families. Those which are not able to be refurbished due to their age or inadequate specifications will be removed by a computer recycling company that has been identified as one of several computer recycling firms in the state on the Web site of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. While we used to auction off old computer equipment, we found that some of the items would be disposed of improperly. We do not want to contribute to the environmental problem of e-waste, so we no longer auction off old computers and peripherals, but we do try to find them a “new home” whenever feasible.
    —-
    Just an FYI!
    Gary

  • Jeff Wilson

    PS. The photo above shows the photographers own Apple. see this link.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/flickerbulb/136052129/

  • http://MacPeople Bob Hemmes

    What a disaster throwing a perfectly good laptop Mac, its sacreligious. If you want to get rid of the I will gladly purchase one and will definitly put it to good use to take on my travels. Please let me know, I will even go to the school to pick it up

    Gatorbob

  • http://www.cyclelogicpress.com Partners in Grime

    Some districts are a wee bit behind the trends.

  • http://www.facebook.com/northeastern292 Alexander Ivanoff

    That is truly an abomination. Someone should tell Keith Olbermann about this. I wish I could take a trip to Florida to get this trashed Macs.

  • RTH

    With media these days it is hard to tell when things are being twisted or blown out of proportion, so I have to lean towards believing Gary’s comment. It is a shame that they are getting rid of them though, whatever it is they are doing with them.

    Also, I though I would point out something I saw on the school’s website. If you go to their program’s page you can obviously see iMacs in two of their pictures, and even an eMac. And then if you follow the computer labs link, there are more. :-D
    I guess they need to update their website. ;-)

    http://www.sarasota.k12.fl.us/Emma/2.programs/index.html

  • Michael Gaskins

    Strange. Don’t know how different Florida laws are compared to South Carolina, but as an employee at a government IT shop, we literally can’t just throw away a computer. It’s against the law – anything that was bought with tax payer money must be made available to the public again at a surplus sale before being disposed of. It’s actually a great place to find some stuff. Most of the comptuers are naturally beyond their useful life when they get sent to surplus, but if you’re hard up for a monitor or something we usually sell those for $10-15 each. Great source for old desks and office chairs too. Guess they either don’t have (or are ignoring) that same restriction.

  • Tom

    I see nothing wrong with a school system simplifying the types of platforms they want to support to one. There are many financial and management reasons to do so. As some posters here are apple only shops just because others choose PC does not make them inferior. I think we confuse preference for fact.
    Apharently some posters have also done the homework to see that there is more to this and the school district is using sound judgement in disposing of the units.

  • Jimbo

    The scrap heap(recycled) is exactly where any Macintosh belongs. They are hardly used in business and we are doing our students a disservice by using them in our schools. Not only do they cost significantly more than standard hardware but they lack the wealth of software available for other operating systems.

    It amazes me the cult following around Apple’s products and how rabid they are when defending everything Apple does and suggesting that everyone else must love the products the way they do. Like there is something wrong with everyone else.

    A G3 and G4 by today’s standards is extremely slow in real world terms and recycling them is hardly out of the ordinary.

  • http://www.innovnet.com Technology Information

    I saw that same thing happen at several large school districts in New Mexico a while back. I bet it happens in a lot of places.