Del Norte County Unified School District Trustee Abbie Crist was absent. Among the items discussed at Tuesday’s meeting:
Surplus babies: Trustees authorized DNUSD staff to surplus more than 24 cases of Baby Think It Overs, realistic baby dolls that haven’t been used for more about 15 years and are taking up space in the school district’s warehouse.
However, they urged Tom Kissinger, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, to reach out to local organizations such as the Family Resource Center of the Redwoods or CASA of Del Norte to see if anyone would care to adopt those baby dolls.
Baby Think It Over was a lifelike, life-size baby doll that cried at “realistic random intervals 24 hours a day.” They were historically used to show teens what parenthood was like.
According to Jeff Napier, DNUSD’s assistant superintendent of business, the district could give them to any charitable agency that wants them.
Chromebook Lease & Refresh Program: The Board of Trustees unanimously approved entering into a Device-as-a-Service program for four years.
Noting that Chromebooks are used for state testing, Ryan Bahten, the district’s director of network services, said a lease and refresh program allows the district to keep students with current technology and provides cost savings. DNUSD purchases about 500 Chromebooks every year, which costs $176,000 for the 2025-26 school year. With tariffs, Bahten said he anticipated 10 to 20 percent increases in technology prices.
Entering into a four-year lease and refresh program would result in a savings of about $200,000 through the 2028-29 school year. DNUSD would lease 500 Chromebook in the first year, another 500 in the second and 500 more in the third year. By the fourth year, DNUSD would send 500 used Chromebooks back or could choose to purchase them at $40 to $50 a device.
“We could keep extending as long as we would like to,” Bahten said. “And we have that option at year four to say, ‘You know, we just purchased these, they’re working really well, we have some more life out of them.’ Which is what we’ve done with the ones we’ve owned — try to stretch them as long as humanly possible.”
Bahten said he’s hoping to always have what the district needs and “never hang on to what we don’t [need].” DNUSD is also not locked into the agreement if the district decides it needs more or fewer devices or a different device.
Bahten said he has thousands of devices in the IT shop that were kept longer than their useful life. He said he hopes to move to a point where devices become a service.
