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Case Study

How Norfolk Public Schools Streamlined Asset Tracking and Reduced Losses

Wyatt Binkley, Networking & Engineering Services Administrator, explains how Frontline’s Asset Management helps his department track devices, enforce accountability, and plan and budget for the future.

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District Background

Before and After Frontline’s Asset Management

Before

Ever-expanding spreadsheets to track devices that looked different at every school

Students were sometimes erroneously assigned multiple devices

Inefficient means of recovering lost devices

Pulling data from spreadsheets was time-consuming and required writing complex formulas

After

Instant visibility through a centralized system that easily tracks comprehensive device details

An efficient device check-in/out process with barcode scanners ensures every student only receives the devices they should have

Bulk-editing statuses and setting unreturned devices to “Lost” locks down missing items, incentivizing students to return them

Advanced reporting features quickly make data available for budgeting, planning, and accountability

Wyatt Binkley, Network Services Manager in Norfolk Public Schools in Virginia, knows the pain of spreadsheet bloat.

Wyatt helps to oversee the District’s inventory for computerized devices. “When we started tracking, we were tracking in homegrown spreadsheets,” he says. “Every school had its own tab in a master workbook, and at first it was just to keep track of the basics: this many desktops of this model or laptops of that model, and what rooms they were in.”

Those spreadsheets kept expanding. As the district encountered more information for devices they needed to track, such as the purchase order used to purchase laptops for a school, Wyatt added additional columns. When he needed to retrieve data, it meant creating complicated filters or writing (and rewriting) formulas.

Norfolk City Public Schools (NPS) tried other software systems — such as the software they used to manage library books — but found it was not suited for assigning devices to students or keeping track when a student transferred between campuses. “We tried to use that for our assets, for IT inventory during the pandemic of 2020. Unfortunately, there were a lot of limitations.” Asset collection grew complicated. “We had devices that were checked out to six different students simultaneously, or we had six students with the same device. It was very messy.”

Things came to a head at the end of the 2019-2020 school year when the district collected 27,000 Chromebooks that had been issued to students during the pandemic. Thousands of devices were not returned, and the spreadsheets each school used to track to whom each device was assigned were not an effective way to recover the lost assets.

Switching to Frontline

In early 2021, NPS began using Frontline’s Asset Management. It allows Wyatt and his team to have a strong database capable of tracking a myriad of details: asset type, status, condition, assignee, site location, device and service history, funding source, end-of-life date, audit history, ticket history, related components, and more.

“We’ve been running it since February 2021,” says Wyatt. “I remember that date only because it was such a big lifting of weight off my shoulders. Up until then I had been using my spreadsheet and if they wanted something new to track or add a new item, I had to go into a spreadsheet and add a bunch of columns and formulas to track things. This just made it so much easier.”

“It was such a big lifting of weight off my shoulders. Up until then I had been using my spreadsheet and if they wanted something new to track or add a new item, I had to go into a spreadsheet and add a bunch of columns and formulas to track things. This just made it so much easier.”

Wyatt Binkley
– Networking and Engineering Services Administrator

Device Check-in/Check-out

It is now far easier for district staff to distribute devices to students and collect them at the end of the year. If checking out a single device, they can simply type the tag or serial number in Asset Management and record the transaction. Barcode scanners make it easy to handle large numbers of devices.

The IT department works with each school when it is time to distribute or collect devices. They enlist trained campus staff to help, and Wyatt says that training campus staff is easy to do.

When they check out a device, the team can see which devices a student already has and if that person owes any outstanding charges for damage or lost accessories. In the future, the IT Department plans to have recipients digitally sign an acceptable use policy, and Asset Management will email them an official receipt. “It will make a lot of headaches disappear when people say, ‘I already returned that,’ or ‘I never received that device.’” Parents will also receive an email with the device details and a return due date set for the last week of school.

Assets can be assigned to a room or to a teacher, or both at the same time. Moving assets from one room to another is a snap, so Wyatt and the inventory team can now track device transfers much more easily.

Reducing Loss

Asset Management allows Wyatt and the inventory team to keep track when students lose devices, and by integrating Asset Management with Google Admin and Jamf, he can quickly see who logged in most recently and when, and lock any devices that are unaccounted for.

At the end of the school year, the team can run a report in Asset Management to see which devices had been checked out to a student but were not returned. He describes what happened at the end of the 2022-2023 school year: “I ran that report and bulk edited the status to ‘Lost.’ At that time, of the 27,000 [devices] that were checked out, about 1,800 had not been returned. So, 1,800 of them got locked, and 24 hours later, a thousand of them showed back up because they had forgotten to turn it in, and they were trying to use it.”

When a lost or stolen device is recovered, Asset Management makes it simple to reactivate the device and return it to service. “We got a call from the police department saying they had found an NPS Chromebook. After they returned the device, I was able to bring it right back into service with the touch of a button, because as soon as I flag it from being ‘Lost’ to ‘Available,’ the integration automatically turns it back to being available for redistribution and checkout and unlocks the device.”

Reporting

Rather than filtering and sorting spreadsheets, Wyatt uses the advanced reporting features in Asset Management to pull any data he needs. He can run a report by location, either on a single campus or multiple locations, and then break it down by room, assignees, transfers, asset type, status (such as Available, In Use, In Repair, Disposed, or Lost), and funding source (such as Title I or ESSER).

Advanced reporting allows his team to get incredibly specific, such as listing the number of devices of a certain type, at a certain campus, with a specific end-of-life date range. This helps him set the technology budget. “With the asset tracking system, when a school says, ‘How many Chromebooks do I have?’ I can run a report very quickly and they can see just how many they have. I can show how many are assigned to students, how many are assigned to staff, how many are in for repair, or how many are sitting in a classroom and supposedly available.”

Asset Management also enables users to automate reports and schedule them to be emailed to specific people on a recurring basis.

Greater Accountability

Advanced reporting features also allow Wyatt’s team to ensure each campus has the technology it needs without over-purchasing. If a school requests additional devices, Wyatt can compare the enrollment in that school to the number of devices already assigned to it, and ensure the devices are correctly checked out to students rather than being loosely categorized under the building’s assets.

For example, if a school has 450 students and there are 600 devices assigned to the school and the principal requests additional laptops, Wyatt now has the data he needs to have a follow-up conversation and understand why. “Rather than me saying, ‘You have all these devices,’ and them saying, ‘No, we don’t,’ I now have a system that tracks it.” Perhaps some devices have been lost and need to be locked, or in some cases, devices may have been transferred but not yet recorded at their new location. Without Asset Management, it would be much more difficult to know what is out there.

This transparency encourages each campus to keep tabs on the devices in their care, and the ease of generating reports and showing irrefutable data has alleviated headaches for Wyatt and his team.

“Pulling those reports made my life easier because I didn’t have to argue the data driven results.”

Wyatt Binkley
– Networking and Engineering Services Administrator

Planning for Future Device Needs

“When I started to use this, the amount of data I was able to start tracking also made it easier for me to figure out what we needed to purchase for additions or replace due to end-of-life devices,” explains Wyatt. “Back in the day, you would ask who needs new devices and they would say, ‘I need 50 new desktops.’ But they may not actually need the 50 desktops because they had 20 other ones sitting in a corner that no one ever used, but no one remembered. So, when it comes to equity for schools, it’s going to be a lot easier to figure out what is where and whose needs are being met or not being met.”

The IT Department can also confidently build its technology budget based on real-world data. When forecasting the expenditures needed, they can run a report to show how many devices will reach their end of life within the next five years. “Being able to track device end-of-life dates really helps plan out future budget needs and lets you see how many of your assets are going to need replacement in the next five years.”

“Having a system that can show me what is going to expire in the next five years, I can plan better so that money is being spent the way it needs to be. Anytime the superintendent or anyone else asks, ‘What’s your plan for this?’ I have a plan with the data to back it up.”

Wyatt Binkley
– Networking and Engineering Services Administrator


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About Frontline Education

Frontline Education is a leading provider of school administration software, connecting solutions for student and special programs, business operations and human capital management with powerful analytics to empower educators. Frontline partners with school systems to deliver tools, data and insights that support greater efficiency and productivity, enabling school leaders to spend more time and resources executing strategies that drive educator effectiveness, student success and district excellence.

Frontline’s broad portfolio includes solutions for proactive recruiting and hiring, absence and time management, professional growth, student information systems, special education, special programs, Medicaid reimbursement, school health management, inventory control and asset management, payroll, benefits and financial management, and analytics solutions that help district leaders tap into their data to make more informed decisions for the benefit of their students and communities. Over 10,000 clients representing millions of educators, administrators and support personnel have partnered with Frontline Education in their efforts to develop the next generation of learners.