Education K-12 : Insuring mid-value student use technology items?

Question

My students check out and use outside the classroom cameras (video, stills), with $200-$1000 value. A couple break every year, maybe one "disappears".

For the checked out items that disappear, that's easy to charge the student full value. However, for the items that come back broken, but have no noticeable sign of neglect, it's difficult to fault the student. (I have seen them fail during use, and not through neglect. Some of my cameras out of warranty break with defects that I later discover are known with the product, so not the fault of the student. These no-fault breaks are very expensive for my classroom budget and instead of increase availability of cameras, I'm maintaining a low number of cameras because of replacement. What solutions are there or are you using in your schools?

1. Lab fees?

2. Student purchased small item value insurance?

3. Other ideas?

How do you in your classes deal with the constant need for new teach through breakage (And obsolescence for that matter)?

Answer 1

Is this your personally owned equipment or is this school property? Depending on the value of the item, cost of insurance and out of pocket deductible for low cost items the insurance may not be worth it. If it is personally owned I was going to suggest insurance like renters or homeowners to cover it. I do not know what classes you teach but maybe if this is something out of budget you can charge a class fee of $20 per student and have that be on hold and let it accumulate for replacements. The PTO may be able to assist sometimes if they have the funds you can request classroom equipment.