NYC Spends $200 Million on Cell Service for School Chromebooks | Hacker News Reader

NYC Spends $200 Million on Cell Service for School Chromebooks

nysfocus.com

37 pointsh2si55 comments

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...

> 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.

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.

Laughing so hard at your naivety.

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

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

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...

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

The company they leased it has already made their money back

$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... .)

> $150 million in 2023, $160 million in 2024. But before the 2008 deal, only ~$20 million.

Someone who read this comment but not the article could assume this was because demand increased unexpectedly. But someone interviewed for the article said the company increased rates and required payment where it was not required before.

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

Corruption is also hugely inflated when there is unchecked power at the top. See for example all of Russia's history, where the more power one has the more corruption there is. Or the current US president and all the advocates for the novel "unitary executive" idea: all about enabling massive corruption and extraction of working people's labor for the benefit of unproductive elites.

>> 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

> 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.

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

> 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.

The endless hand-wringing over extreme equity at all costs is causing a lot of bad decisions.

How about this: Anyone who needs cellular can request it by filling out a form and then it’s activated on their machine.

No equity problems. No need to buy a million lines of service for 800,000 students up front.

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.

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.

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

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).

> 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.

Because some of those teachers really want the kids to achieve and are bound by a sense of duty and care for their students.

Good teachers aren't paid enough. Aren't paid anywhere near enough.

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).

You can't sell them an education package SaaS that costs $200/student/mo that just rehashes the same educational tool set from the 60's.

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.

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.

I believe this closes the thread.

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.

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).

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.

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

Like what?

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.

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.

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.

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?

> 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.

It doesn't run on Chromebooks either...

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.

You can always reinstall if the kid messes with the OS too much. --> then all your sysadmins will be reinstalling os all the time? so they figured why not give the users an OS that cannot be messed with...

unless maybe the sysadmins are also linux tutors or something? their job is teaching kids how to use linux. not to make sure their computers can work for the math class.

That can be easily automated, and has been in a variety of ways. Just plug a USB or an Ethernet port, press 1-2 keys and done. The sysadmins won't have to go through a normal install wizard.

if only i could compel the org to only buy laptops that have built-in lan ports..sigh

But with a LAN port, wouldn't you agree that reinstallation could take 1-2 human minutes of work, even if the whole process takes an hour? Take the laptop, plug it in, press a key, wait however much, then take it out and give it back to the student. The student could even do it themselves.

And even without a LAN port I assume there are various ways to automate it so it isn't really an issue. If you keep /home or if most files are synced, students could break their OSes every day if they want to. One of those students will actually learn from it, at least.

many wants yes

> I don't think Chromebooks are good computers for kids to learn on.

I think its fine for kids to learn on. Its arguably not ideal for learning computing, but that's not most of what kids learn using a computer.

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

Price per unit and the fact that its bundled with software and services for centralized administration. There's nothing comparable in traditional Linux. Windows could have competed but dropped the low-end netbook as a category right around when Google started making inroads with Chromebook, and even with Windows-on-ARM neither Microsoft nor anyone using Windows seems to have really targeted the same market.

> Is it just Google having a good sales team?

I don't know how good their sales team is, I think they are the only firm that acts like they want market at all.

Why not just improve the free public wifi?

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.

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.

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