Administration votes to no longer supply ink

By Catelyn DiLeva

Opinion Editor

The school will no longer provide ink cartridges for teachers for the remainder of the school year, Costa Principal Dr. Ben Dale stated in an email sent to all Costa staff members on Oct. 5.

Mira Costa will no longer supply ink cartridges because administration wants to invest money into more vital technology at Costa, Dale said.  This will also serve to further Costa’s goal of encouraging teachers to distribute their assignments online instead of on printed paper, he said.

“We spend a lot of money on ink for classroom printers when teachers can easily upload a document onto Canvas instead,” Dale said. “We want teachers to find other ways of handing out assignments other than just printing.”

Click here to read about ink cartridges’ high cost and how it effects people.

English teacher Shawn Chen, English Department Co-Chair Alan Zeoli and History Department Co-Chair Bill Fauver believe that printers are an essential resource in their classes because students better memorize information when they are writing it down, Fauver said.

“Basically, if [Costa] is going to have a policy where it plans to go paperless, it is good to communicate that to the staff beforehand with a reasonable timeline instead of secretly springing it upon staff members so that the teachers can prepare for it,” Chen said

The majority of the teachers were the last of the campus staff to find out that they would no longer be provided with ink cartridges for their classrooms, Chen said. Chen feels that the way that the administration communicated the new policy to teachers was neither respectful nor intelligent, she said.

Click here to read about how people can save money while still using ink cartridges.

However, with the school’s introduction this year of Canvas, a new Learning Management System, teachers can integrate technology in their classrooms more than before, Dale said. Therefore, administration feels that ink cartridges are no longer essential for the classroom, he said.

Photos: Administration implemented new policy regarding ink cartridges

“There are other ways to distribute assignments besides printing them since now, teachers can upload their class assignments onto Canvas,” Dale said. “Administration needed to evaluate if cartridges are something we needed to spend money on.”