Effingham County School District (ECSD), is a public school district in Effingham County, Georgia which is just 30 miles from the city of Savannah. They are a PreK – 12th Grade school district with an estimated enrollment of 11,800 students. The district consists of eight elementary schools, three middle schools, and two high schools.
Effingham County School District was an early adopter of Chromebooks. They are faced with aging devices that are soon to go End of Life by Google. EOL on a Chromebook means that Google will no longer support the device and automatic software updates from Google are no longer guaranteed. They will also not be able to manage the devices from the Google Admin Console. In addition to the Chromebooks, they needed to replace some aging charging carts as well.
Effingham County School District was searching for a cost-effective vendor to provide Chromebooks and charging carts in a “turnkey” fashion, with minimal involvement of ECSD staff. ScholarBuys provided the lowest bid price per unit on carts and Chromebooks, as well as the integration services of enrollment and cart installation.
They chose to work with ScholarBuys based on our turnkey all-in-one solution to fit their needs. Since ScholarBuys works exclusively in the academic field, we were able to put together a custom solution for them which made it very easy to refresh their equipment. Jeff Lariscy, the Director of IT at ECSD, mentions another reason they chose to work with ScholarBuys was that the initial reference checks returned the best responses of any of the other vendors responding to the RFP. Additionally, ScholarBuys provided the standard equipment requested without substitution; while other vendors requested a substitute cart model which did not appeal to their end users.
Lenovo 100e Chromebook
Effingham County School District decided on the Lenovo N23 Chromebook and have since moved to the brand new Lenovo 100E Chromebooks. For their charging needs they selected the Bretford Core 36 Charging Cart. To complete the offering, they decided to go with white glove service on both the Chromebooks and the charging carts. This included onsite wiring and unboxing and Asset Tags for inventory control. To date ECSD has procured 1,923 Chromebooks and 53 Charging Carts from ScholarBuys.
“ECSD has experienced good service with ScholarBuys providing enrollment, asset tagging, and cart installation. Any issues that were encountered and reported to ScholarBuys personnel were addressed quickly. We look forward to a continued relationship with ScholarBuys as future purchases are considered.”
