Schools have two problems at once that most businesses don't: the data is children's records, and the equipment is frequently public property with its own disposal rules. Both have to be satisfied, and they pull in different directions.
If you take one thing from this page: release every device from management before disposal.
A Chromebook still enrolled in your Google Admin console is locked to your domain and effectively unusable by anyone else. An iPad still in Apple School Manager and your MDM is the same. A Windows laptop still joined to the domain and enrolled in Intune is the same. In every case the device drops from resale value to parts value, and the gap is large — frequently more than half the unit's worth.
On a batch of 800 Chromebooks that single administrative step is the difference between a meaningful cheque and almost nothing. It takes an administrator an afternoon. It is reliably the highest-value hour in the whole project.
Deprovision in the admin console, remove from Apple School Manager or your Google organisational unit, and unenroll from MDM. Then they can be wiped and sold.
The devices need sanitising so student records cannot be recovered, and the school should keep a record showing it was done. Student education records are protected, and the obligation to safeguard them applies to the hardware they were stored on. Teacher and administrator machines deserve particular attention, since they often hold local copies of gradebooks, accommodation documents and parent correspondence that were never on a central system.
A Chromebook still enrolled in a school's Google Admin console is locked to that domain and cannot be used by anyone else, which drops it from resale value to parts value. The same applies to iPads still in Apple School Manager and Windows laptops still joined to a domain or enrolled in device management. Deprovisioning devices before disposal is usually the single highest-value administrative step in the whole project, particularly on large batches.
That depends on district policy and applicable public property rules. Most districts have a written surplus procedure covering how equipment is declared surplus, what approvals are needed, and how disposal is recorded, and some require equipment to be offered internally or publicly before a commercial sale. Check the policy before committing to a buyer, since approval timelines usually govern the schedule more than the logistics do.
Yes, and volume works in your favour, since several hundred identical units can be processed as a batch which lifts the per-unit price. The two things that most affect what a batch is worth are whether the devices have been released from management and their physical condition, particularly screens and hinges on devices that have been through student use.
Those hold the largest concentration of protected records in the district and should be treated accordingly. Account for every drive including boot modules and RAID cache, consider on-site destruction so nothing readable leaves the building, and keep the per-drive certificate with the district's records retention documentation.
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