Saratoga Springs City School District - Testimonial

Case Study: Saratoga Springs High School

Resurfacing Chalkboards with Think Board

Saratoga Springs City School District turned 50-year-old chalkboards into modern dry-erase surfaces with Think Board, avoiding a costly asbestos abatement and saving the district roughly $244,000 across the project.

Project at a glance

The problem

Saratoga Springs High School was built in 1969. While it was later renovated in 2002, each classroom in the building still has the original chalkboards from 1969. While it may be possible to remove these boards and install new whiteboards with a full asbestos abatement in each classroom, the cost was so expensive that Saratoga Springs City School District decided to just leave the chalkboards in place. The result: 122 classrooms, with 50 year old chalkboards on 2–3 sides, now only used as decoration space.

The action

In 2017, Assistant Principal Wolpert asked us to resurface a few classrooms to demonstrate the quality. After a year of testing, Saratoga decided to resurface a handful of classrooms at a time, starting with the Math and Science classrooms. To date, Think Board has resurfaced the chalkboards in 88 total classrooms.

The response

“We found that Think Board holds up just as well as any whiteboard we can buy. And the great part about this is that we retrofitted these chalkboards that have stood the test of time. These chalkboards are really heavy. They're very durable. And when we put the Think Board product over them, it makes them into about as good of a whiteboard as you can get.”

— Kevin Wolpert, Assistant Principal, Saratoga Springs High School, Saratoga Springs City School District

We have been working with Saratoga Springs High School since 2017 and have since expanded our presence into the rest of the district. We now have Think Boards in the High School, Middle School, and 3 of the Elementary Schools, with plans to fully cover these buildings next.

The savings

Saratoga informed us that each 4’x12’ chalkboard would have cost them $1,200, not including shipping & installation labor. With Think Board, they paid $400. With 122 classrooms, and each classroom having 2–3 boards this size, the total cost savings of this project will be about $244,000. There is also an incalculable environmental benefit to resurfacing with Think Board vs adding chalkboards to the landfill and buying brand new whiteboards.

Resurfaced chalkboard turned into a dry-erase whiteboard in a Saratoga Springs High School classroom

What started as a handful of test classrooms is now a district-wide standard — proof that existing chalkboards can be given a second life as high-quality whiteboards.

Learn more

Read the full case study (PDF). You can also learn about whiteboard & chalkboard resurfacing or request a school quote.