For the 2024-2025 school year, Bernards High School has cut costs in the form of printers. Due to budgeting issues, there are no longer printers available for use in teachers’ classrooms. This adjustment has been felt by both teachers and students as this not only makes things inconvenient for teachers, but also for students who print work for their classes.

In the past, teachers were able to use their classroom printers to print their lesson plans, however, due to the removal of the printers that is no longer the case. 

“Removing printers from the classroom is inconvenient because there is no option if something is needed immediately,” said Mr. Ciocco, the Latin teacher, “For example, if a student asks to retake an assessment and I don’t have extra copies in my filing cabinet, they need to wait until after I am able to leave to print. If I miscount something, there’s nothing I can do because there is no printer in the room. So, I try to print extra copies of anything I need for these reasons, but even then I get very anxious that I miscounted or will run out or forget something.”

Teachers have an added layer of stress with the removal of printers as well as a lack of ease for lessons that involve handouts. When preparing lesson plans, teachers have to double and triple-check to ensure that no student will be missing an assignment.

“I do understand the idea of how it should streamline copies and printing and the benefits,” said Mr. Ciocco, “but it was a nice emergency option to have in case of sudden changes or mistakes and something needs to be printed immediately.”

Similarly, students are required to print homework assignments for their classes and have relied on classroom printers to print their assignments when the media center is closed. This has caused difficulty for students, especially those who do not have access to printers at home.

“Sometimes I need to print something for a class but the media center is packed, so I ask a teacher to print the assignment,” said Juliette Raguso ‘26, “But because the classroom printers are removed, it makes turning in assignments that need to be printed difficult.”

Despite these inconveniences, there is a logical reason behind the cutback. For starters, there were over 220 printers in the district, most of which were at the end of their life cycle. The cost to repair or replace every printer is neither logical nor feasible given the scale alone. In cutting back on the number of printers in the district, the technology department is attempting to be more efficient with the printers.

The only cost that may arise from this decision would be if the purchase of a new printer were approved. As well as this the funds saved from eliminating the printers within classrooms will be allocated to purchasing items such as Chromebooks, iPads, technology repair parts, power cords, and more. Mr. Schwarz, however, was not able to provide exact numbers for costs and savings by the time of press.

“The District has gained functionality, security, and cost savings which allows us to have an opportunity to allocate tax dollars elsewhere,” said Mr. Schwarz, Director of Technology.

Students, whose parents’ tax dollars are allocated to such spending, should be a part of the decision process in such circumstances. There have been no technological improvements seen by students with this recent change so far. Although this change may become more evident in the years to come, it is not a change currently witnessed by the students.

“I haven’t noticed any new technological improvements during this school year,” said Claire Taylor ‘25.

Additionally, with the removal of the printers in the classrooms, teachers are now required to scan their ID to use the copier machines. This print release function has been introduced for a majority of reasons. First and foremost, the new method has been introduced as a security measure. According to Mr. Schwarz, this function ensures that only the intended user has access to the documents that need to be printed. Additionally, this choice was made to cut back on wasteful printing habits and regulate what the copiers and printers are used for to ensure only district-related content is printed.

While there may be benefits to the removal of the printers, those advantages have not been felt by the staff or student body.