A Texas school district leases 14,585 MacBook Neo laptops and iPads to replace its ChromebooksA Texas school district leases 14,585 MacBook Neo laptops and iPads to replace its Chromebooks

Beaumont Independent School District in Texas has approved a four-year lease of 14,585 Apple devices to replace its ageing Chromebooks.

The Beaumont Enterprise first reported the plan, and AppleInsider, iDrop News and Gadget Review followed on 1 October. The lease is worth $11.19 million, about $2.8 million a year. It covers 4,085 iPads for pre-kindergarten to second grade, 9,500 MacBook Neo laptops for grades three to twelve, and 1,000 MacBook Neo laptops for teachers. AppleInsider's headline gives $12.9 million, but its own article and every other report give $11.19 million, and that is the figure used here. Apple has not commented.

Why the district is leaving Chromebooks

Deputy superintendent Rachel Harrah told the Enterprise the district was spending almost half a million dollars supporting a fleet that is barely moving. The reported figures support her: $212,574 on repairs since January 2025, $220,040 of IT staff time in the 2025-26 school year and $36,962 in overtime, about $470,000 in all, across 6,642 repairs in one school year. Nearly two-thirds of the devices are past their recommended life, and iDrop News reports that 7,302 Chromebooks are currently unusable.

How Apple won on cost

The district compared Lenovo and Asus and chose Apple on projected four-year cost, according to the reports. The factors named are zero per cent financing on the laptops and 0.99 per cent on iPads, AppleCare+, and resale value: iDrop News puts the expected return at $180 to $250 per Apple device against about $10 for a current Chromebook. The district also plans to seek Apple's approval to repair screens, batteries and keyboards in-house. The first year's payment comes from the district's fund balance.

Our take

This is what the MacBook Neo was built for. A low-cost Mac only makes sense in schools if the total cost over a lease beats the cheap laptop it replaces, and Beaumont's arithmetic says it can, largely because of resale. A Chromebook worth $10 at the end of four years has cost its full price; a Mac worth $200 has not.

APPDOOK would add two cautions. The resale figure is a projection about the used market in 2030, and it is the number doing the most work in the comparison. And the in-house repair plan depends on approval from Apple that has not yet been granted. If either falls short, the savings shrink.

Harrah's other argument, that no workplace uses a Chromebook, is the one Apple will want quoted, and it is the weaker one: the case Beaumont actually made is about repair bills and depreciation. That is also the case other districts with five-year-old Chromebook fleets will be weighing this year, and it is why one district in Texas is worth Apple's attention well beyond its 14,585 devices.