Silly, they could be made to run a lightweight Linux Distro.
I really like my Chromebooks. I despise it when I have to use a Windows (wait) machine for the tasks that a Chromebook won’t do. It is a real joy to do a cold boot in 15 seconds and it never slows down with age like a wait machine does.
Imagine the “cost” of a politically connected IT company getting paid to install Linux on all those computers. Of course it would have to be staffed by representatives of the “inclusive” community. Sam Brinton could be team lead. Sure the students could learn how in a tech course but why teach the kids this stuff when a politically connected company can fleece the taxpayer for millions?
I've avoided Chromebooks as I have plenty of good hardware running Windows and Linux. Over the last 20 years, I would retire a Windows system and put Linux on the hardware. That significantly extended the service life. Last year, one of the Linux machines failed to boot after upgraded Fedora. Why? The Fedora release was UEFI ONLY. It would not boot on legacy DOS filesystems using MBR and traditional partition tables. I discarded the motherboard, CPU, RAM and power supply. The box was fine to host a new motherboard/CPU/RAM/Power supply. It's likely good for many more years now.
If you have a good line on how to update the Chromebooks to a Linux distro, you could probably make some decent money buying lots of "discarded" Chromebooks, updating with Linux and reselling.
What? You cannot expect an educational institution to do such complex things. Next you are going to be suggesting they teach algebra or something.