Device retirement for schools, districts and colleges

What we do

We run the retirement around your calendar and your device list. Scoping, the on-site count against the district's records, collection, sealed custody, and the manifest that reconciles what left each school. It's the same process we run for every client — we're not going to invent a specialization to look like a schools vendor — but the reconciliation is the part districts care about, and it's the part we do.

Processing happens in our own facility — intake, sanitization, grading and onward routing under one contract and one custody chain, which is one award rather than several. For a public body that has to competitively award anyway, that's usually the arrangement you were heading for regardless.

Who this is for

The person who owns the refresh. In a district that's usually the technology director; in a college it can be anyone from IT to procurement to the business office. Frequently it's someone who inherited three thousand Chromebooks and a board meeting.

What we handle

Phones, tablets and laptops, including managed Chromebooks and managed iPads.

The console release stays with your administrator, and that's the right place for it. Google Admin, Apple Business or School Manager, Intune, Jamf — releasing devices means someone acting inside the console that governs your student data. A disposal vendor asking for that access is asking for the keys to your MDM, which is a bigger risk than the one you were solving.

What we do is make sure it actually happens. We identify the steps for your platform, put them in the project plan as a dated task with an owner, and check the state of a sample before anything is loaded. A device that arrives still enrolled is the single most common way fleet value evaporates, and catching it at the school is the difference between a value project and a scrap project.

Three thousand Chromebooks, no budget line, and a board meeting

A one-to-one program reaches end of life and suddenly a district owns thousands of devices it can't use, can't store and can't quietly skip.

The refresh has a budget line. The retirement usually doesn't. Then somebody asks in a public meeting what happened to the old ones, and the answer has to be better than a vendor's word.

The bit where fleet value disappears

Managed devices carry enrollment and management state that has to be released by an authorized administrator, in the right order, before anyone touches the hardware.

Done beforehand, it's a value question. Discovered afterwards, it's a scrap question, and it's avoidable, and it's often not avoided.

The project checklist covers the release steps and links to the platform documentation for each.

How custody works

Districts care about the reconciliation more than about the truck, so that is the part to describe.

Before the day. We work from the device list your district issues. Where you have asset tags or a student-assignment export, that is the list we count against.

At the school. We count what is presented against that list, at the site, before anything is loaded. Discrepancies are recorded at the moment they are found rather than reconciled afterwards from memory.

The device that isn't on the list. It gets written down as exactly that, with whatever identifiers it carries, and handed back to you as an exception line. It is not quietly absorbed into the count. In a one-to-one program the exceptions are usually the interesting part — the units that never came back, the spares nobody recorded, the loaner that was reissued three times.

At handover. Containers are sealed, seal numbers recorded, and you get a signed manifest before the vehicle leaves. At intake, seals are checked against that manifest before anything is opened, and every unit is booked in against its asset tag and serial.

Nothing moves before you have written acceptance and transport instructions from us.

The report a board actually wants

Not tonnage. A board can't do anything with tonnage.

What a useful report answers is what was received and whether it reconciles against what left the building, what happened to each unit, and what the exercise returned. The third one is the question that gets asked in the meeting, and it's the one worth asking any provider to show you a sample of.

We produce the first, and it's the one that settles the argument. The collection manifest answers what was received and whether it reconciles: counted against your list, exceptions noted, seal numbers recorded, signed and dated at the school.

The other two come from the processing side, which is also us — the certificate of sanitization per media item, and a disposition and settlement report tied to serial numbers. Agree the format in writing before the first collection, because the board meeting where somebody asks is not the moment to discover what was never specified.

Timing

School retirement runs on the academic calendar, not the fiscal one. The devices become available when the students hand them back, and the window is usually shorter than anyone plans for.

Tell us your window at scoping and we'll tell you plainly whether we can meet it. We'd rather decline a date than take a booking we can't hold, and we won't publish a lead time we haven't earned the right to promise.

Plan around the console release, not the truck. A summer window fails far more often because thousands of devices still need releasing by an administrator who is also on leave. Put the release on the calendar first and book everything else behind it — that sequencing is a large part of what you're hiring us for.

Service area

Based in Colorado Springs, taking inventory from districts and colleges anywhere in the United States.

What we can evidence, and what we can't

We hold no certifications today. When we do, they'll be on the standards page with a number you can look up.

What we will tell you now is that "FERPA compliant destruction" is a phrase that cannot mean what it sounds like. FERPA specifies no sanitization method and there is no FERPA certification or approved vendor list. Any provider using that phrase is describing something the regulation does not create.

What FERPA does and doesn't require on disposal

It isn't silent on destruction, and the audit-or-evaluation exception isn't the only relevant provision. Several bear on it, plus two in IDEA Part B.

What FERPA actually requires on device disposal sets out the provisions, where the duty sits between a district and its vendor, and what has to be in the contract because the regulation won't do it for you.