First toilet paper, then yeast. Now laptops are hard to find

An employee distributes a Google Chromebook laptop during a technology deployment event at Parkrose High School in Portland, Oregon, U.S., on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2020. Parkrose School District estimates it may spend as much as $900,000 on cleaning supplies this year, the school's director of business services & operations Sharie Lewis said. It has already paid out $411,000 on Chrome books for students to learn at home, cutting its reserves almost in half.

In March, as the country transitioned to online learning almost overnight because of the pandemic, many schools and families did their best to make do with the tools they had.

The situation revealed deep disparities in access to at-home technology, and many school districts hoped to rectify the situation when they began hybrid or online schooling come fall.

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