Uxbridge school pauses MCAS testing after 11-year-old student suffers burns from district laptop

UXBRIDGE, Mass. — Uxbridge school officials paused MCAS testing and emergency crews evacuated the Whitin Intermediate School after a student suffered burns from a district laptop while taking the test on Tuesday.

The 6th-grade student, Gabe Sobrinho, suffered burns to his left hand after his ACER C734 Chromebook malfunctioned at 9:30 a.m. while he was taking the ELA MCAS exam.

“He said he was reading a book but heard a sound and then his Chromebook blew up,” said Davin Sobrinho, Gabe’s brother.

The school-owned laptop began smoking, prompting a building evacuation, officials said. Uxbridge Fire crews responded to clear and ventilate the building, and students and staff returned to the building by 10:45 a.m.

Sobrinho was taken to an area hospital with burns and blisters on his hand.

“The malfunction caused the laptop to burn,” said Superintendent Michael Baldassarre. “The student using the laptop did suffer some burns on his left hand.”

Baldassarre says every student with an ACER C734 Chromebook needs to turn their laptops in at their schools on Wednesday morning and a thorough safety evaluation will be conducted.

More than 600,000 C734 Chromebooks are being used across the U.S., and ACER says this is the first incident of its type.

“Customer safety is Acer’s top priority, and we have a long history of providing PCs and other devices to school districts across the nation,” the technology company said in a statement. “We believe this is an isolated incident, and we are awaiting the return of the unit to investigate the root cause. We began shipping this model in October of 2021 and have shipped more than 600,000 units, and there have been zero additional reports of battery overheating to the point of causing smoke. Acer closely monitors the failure rates and causes of all product lines – the C734 Chromebook is highly reliable with few technical issues of any kind.”

ACER is working on sending loaner Chromebooks to the district and is sending a technician to the Whitin Intermediate School on Wednesday to review the affected laptop, according to Baldassarre.

“We want to make sure we evaluate what happened with this unit before we move forward” using that model, Baldassarre said.

For now, MCAS testing is postponed only for students in grades 4 through 6. Updates regarding testing will be shared with Whitin Intermediate School families as soon as they are available, officials said.

State education regulations call for all MCAS testing to be complete by April 26.

ACER has confirmed that they will send 450 devices with the appropriate operating system so that the MCAS assessments can be administered.

Uxbridge school pauses MCAS testing after 11-year-old student suffers burns from district laptop

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