NYC Spends $200 Million on Cell Service for School Chromebooks

https://nysfocus.com/2025/12/22/eric-adams-school-chromebooks-contract

24•h2si•2h ago

Comments

epistasis•1h ago

This is one of the many disadvantages of empowering a strong executive that can overrule the internal specialists. There are also lots of disadvantages of weak executive models of governance too, mostly around stagnation and adherence to the status quo...

Chicago auctioning away its parking revenue for 75 years for a mere $1.6B was a far bigger mistake and curse upon the public. At least the chromebooks have a far shorter lifetime

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/12/nx-s1-5642708/chicago-parking...

thaumasiotes•1h ago

> Chicago auctioning away its parking revenue for 75 years for a mere $1.6B was a far bigger mistake and curse upon the public.

Depending on your perspective, you might see that as a boon to the cause of free parking.

otherjason•1h ago

The parking spaces in question aren’t free; the city sold the long-term rights to operate the parking facilities to the private sector in a bid to balance one year’s budget.

lithos•1h ago

Laughing so hard at your naivety.

They sold parking rate setting, collections, and towing to a mixture of Morgan Stanley and Abu Dhabi

nkrisc•1h ago

They sold the rights to the revenue. They sold a dollar tomorrow for a penny today.

lotsofpulp•51m ago

The street parking deal is chump change. Government’s routinely pay government employees with underfunded defined benefit pensions and retiree healthcare for a penny today. Especially Chicago and Illinois (multiple standard deviations above the norm).

I’m pretty sure they sold the street parking because of the underfunded obligations to previous employees.

These reports go further in depth, with comparisons to other governments:

https://www.truthinaccounting.org/resources/page/state-repor...

https://www.truthinaccounting.org/resources/page/city-report...

kelnos•1h ago

Out of curiosity, what does Chicago's yearly parking revenue look like? (Not doubting that they made a bad deal, just curious.)

blahyawnblah•52m ago

The company they leased it has already made their money back

loeg•17m ago

$150 million in 2023, $160 million in 2024. But before the 2008 deal, only ~$20 million. (All numbers from https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-parking-meters... .)

markus_zhang•43m ago

I’d rather mark that as corruption, not mistake. Those people are not stupid (when they can sprinkle $$ to their friends).

loandbehold•40m ago

>> Chicago auctioning away its parking revenue for 75 years for a mere $1.6B was a far bigger mistake and curse upon the public. At least the chromebooks have a far shorter lifetime

Given that upcoming self-driving revolution likely means those parking spaces will have very little use, it may end up to be an unintentionally wise decision.

halestock•24m ago

Yeah but by the time that revolution is here, the contract will have ended.

chrisshroba•16m ago

The contract ends in 2083 (58 years), which even by conservative estimates is well after cars will be able to self-park

pseudalopex•17m ago

No. The company recouped their investment already.[1]

[1] https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-parking-meters...

stogot•13m ago

OP was saying it was stupid for Chicago to give that away for peanuts

pseudalopex•8m ago

The person I replied to said Chicago's decision may end up to be wise.

callc•15m ago

Is this sarcasm?

Dismissing concerns of issues that affect people today with the promise of some solution that may or may not happen to the degree you think it may address the real problems of today is really not cool.

On other note, Chicago in winter may be icy driving. It may be harder to convince Chicagoans to join the “revolution” that sunny day Californians (or any other non-icy weather areas)

anotherhue•1h ago

IDK, not having to worry about wifi, about if the ISP bill was paid, if the signal reaches their room, if they can do their school work while away from home, at a grandparents, etc. etc. Seems like an expensive but worthwhile call.

innagadadavida•1h ago

This is just plain corruption and the government officials were paid off. The parents of students should have been given the option to request the devices if needed and that would have been 1000x cheaper.

irishcoffee•1h ago

I believe this closes the thread.

saagarjha•1h ago

I think the students who have internet trouble at home may not always be in a situation where their parents are voluntarily going to the school to request these devices.

websiteapi•1h ago

I find this comment amusing. How is this different than any non-means tested benefit? Or would the same criticism apply? (fwiw I think this money could have been spent better elsewhere).

Aurornis•1h ago

> and for up to one million lines of cell service for those and other school-issued laptops and tablets, according to contract documents reviewed by New York Focus

One million lines of cellular service for 800,000 students.

It’s a good idea to enable cellular service for those who don’t have adequate access at home. The majority of people don’t fit this description, though. As the article says, only about 1/8th of the students surveyed could be categorized as having inadequate access.

Somebody pushed a huge contract and got it, even though the service wasn’t needed at this scale. WiFi Chromebooks by default with a cellular option for the students who needed it would have saved a lot of recurring cellular contract charges.

Atlas667•1h ago

Classic capitalist state leeching tactics, I'm betting somebody got a favor somewhere.

blehn•50m ago

> It’s a good idea to enable cellular service for those who don’t have adequate access at home.

But then the students with mobile access have an advantage over those who only have home access. And how do you determine who has adequate access at home and who doesn't? Much easier and more equitable to just provide it for everyone.

zeroCalories•1h ago

I would 100% support prosecuting the people responsible for wasting public funds. This is the kind of abuse that undermines trust in the state, and make it difficult to provide things to people that actually need them. The Adams administration is a disgrace.

xp84•1h ago

Just wait till you see what foolish stuff the new guy will do! He’s already promised a lot of real whoppers

dfxm12•1h ago

Like what?

skeeter2020•54m ago

You should check out Eric Adams in more detail. The guy - and his team - ranges from ridiculous to nuts to outright corrupt. A few excerpts:

>> Equally memorable, perhaps, were the strange subplots along the way: his hatred of rats and fear of ghosts; the mysteries about his home, his diet, his childhood; and his endless supply of catchphrases, gestures and head-scratching stories that could instantly transform a mundane bureaucratic event into a widely shared meme.

>> Then, on Sept. 26, 2024, federal prosecutors brought fraud and bribery charges against Adams, accusing him of allowing Turkish officials and other businesspeople to buy his influence with illegal campaign contributions and steep discounts on overseas trips.

>> Investigators also seized phones from the mayor's police commissioner, schools chancellor and multiple deputy mayors. Each denied wrongdoing, but a mass exodus of leadership followed, along with questions about the mayor’s ability to govern.

>> ...Weeks after Trump took office, the Justice Department dismissed the corruption case, writing in a two-page memo that it had interfered with Adams’ ability to help with the president’s immigration agenda.

softgrow•1h ago

I hope the students can choose to use their own wifi at home if they have it, much better service for them. Depending on how it's setup, the cellular contract may be not be that crippling. When enterprises buy thousands of services they pool data across the SIM's and get quite reasonable rates for what is used, be it a fleet of IOT devices with low usage or laptops with some high usage. If you are just buying one service, you are really at a disadvantage compared to enterprise deals.

hshdhdhj4444•1h ago

How about we just give their entire families Internet access for free?

Fios js something like $75/mo for gigabit Ethernet (inclusive of a WiFi router, etc) and there are smaller gigabit providers that will give you service for under $50. And with bulk contracts I’m sure the govt could get a better price than even that.

If the govt can negotiate a rate of about $25/mo it could provide all 800k students homes high quality internet.

But only about 115k are estimated to have insufficient internet access so at $50/month, you can provide (let’s round up to 150k students) all their families internet access for $90mm as opposed to the $200mm they’re currently paying.

Nevermind. The article states the city has gotten Spectrum to agree to $15/mo service. So providing every student’s family free internet service would cost the city $160mm. You would still save well over 20% before considering the hardware cost savings by not having to buy LTE.

ndriscoll•51m ago

For a one-time $60/computer they could put a 1 TB nvme drive in preloaded with whatever software they need, all of English wikipedia, all classic literature and textbooks they will reference, and 850 GB of whatever else is useful reference material (e.g. maybe all of the Khan Academy videos). It's very non-obvious to me that school computers need an Internet connection at all. Have it back up the kids' home folders onto a school network drive automatically when it gets on the school wifi.

t-writescode•43m ago

How do the students turn in assignments and/or get live help on their assignments?

ndriscoll•40m ago

They go to class. Teachers should not be helping students outside of school hours. They should have a life and meet their own needs as humans. For that matter students shouldn't be doing more than 6-7 hours of school work per day, which they already get at school. Students have no need to turn in assignments outside of normal hours, and it's unhealthy to encourage them to do so (this is where uni professors really need to stop setting computers to accept work at midnight. Horrible habit to build that needs to be untaught when people start working).

lostlogin•16m ago

> Teachers should not be helping students outside of school hours.

I agree. But for some reason teachers work after school and at weekends, for free. I’m unsure why they don’t just stop.

sokoloff•13m ago

When I was in university, midnight was well inside “normal hours” for me (mostly by choice, not by crushing workload despite being at a competitive school).

blehn•49m ago

Why not just improve the free public wifi?

idle_zealot•29m ago

That's a good mid-term project, but this is how you give kids internet access today. Whether Chromebook/internet-based schooling is something worth pursuing in general is another matter.

fennecbutt•33m ago

Unsurprising. Corruption, wasted tax money, violence, crime, etc are everywhere and all of us apathetic voters just look the other way a little more each day. We reap what we sow, we must lie in the beds we've made.

bgbntty2•26m ago

I don't think Chromebooks are good computers for kids to learn on. They may learn how to use a browser and a relatively-closed ecosystem of dumbed down apps, but they won't learn working with a real OS, much less tinkering or experimenting with it. What's wrong with normal laptops running a Linux distro? You can always reinstall if the kid messes with the OS too much.

What is the reason given for Chromebooks being used so much in US schools? Is it just Google having a good sales team?

John7878781•20m ago

> What is the reason given for Chromebooks being used so much in US schools?

Chromebooks are much cheaper than Windows laptops.

Similarly priced chromebooks are also much more responsive than their Windows counterparts (mainly due to the OS being so optimized to run on crappy hardware). And you're right -- Linux might be a viable alternative here. But it's not like the corporate world runs on Linux.

sokoloff•17m ago

They’re a pretty good mix of incredibly cheap, reasonably rugged, fast enough to run classroom and edit docs, well-understood/documented how to use, consistent across the student population, and have incredible battery life.

Our high school issues every entering student a Chromebook and they keep it when they leave. I am pretty happy to see my tax money spent that way.

afavour•24m ago

They could do better than this I’m sure, but I don’t know what this number actually should be.

Since COVID the city has had to ensure students can attend school remotely. A number of students in the city don’t have reliable internet connections at home (indeed some are homeless) so an alternative is needed.

I imagine it’s very difficult to guarantee you’ve reached out to ensure every kid has internet access. Send a form home? A bunch of disengaged parents won’t fill it out. How you support a student whose parent does absolutely nothing to help is a perennial problem in schools. This at least guarantees everyone has access.

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