How to Support Technology in a Small School District
May 30, 2008
John Puskar from Classroom2.0 asks:
I am the technology coordinator for a rural SW Pennsylvania K12 district with about 2100 students and about 155 teachers. Its just me and another guy taking care of it all! Computers, servers, network, phones, security cameras, you name it….if it connects to something else….we ultimately end up being the ones to figure it out. We don’t use any outside companies for anything, we install it, fix it, replace it. Whatever needs done, we do it ourselves. Our budget is next to negative. I’m insterested in discussing with others best practices with limited resources. The school environment presents challenges that no other IT professionals will ever have to deal with. Every computer is a shared computer and that makes for some difficult obstacles to overcome. I am more than willing to share and learn what works and what doesn’t.
Quick answer - look into working with companies that can provide staffing and expertise as needed so you can better manage resources and plan for the future.
Now, given that Smart Solutions offers these kinds of services I’m somewhat biased in favor of this approach. I honestly believe, however, that by bringing in outside technology partners, school districts can provide better IT services at lower cost than they can by “going it alone.”
This is part of the reason I chose to come work for Smart Solutions, and it’s the reason I’d recommend John look into this approach for your district.
What John has described will likely result in the internal IT staff getting overwhelmed with day-to-day work and not having the time to think strategically about leveraging their IT assets.
My first few questions if I were John’s consultant would be:
- Does your district qualify for State/Federal funding through E-rate Priority 2 to help with their network maintenance?
- Are you working with surrounding districts to pool resources?
If you have other contributions to this important topic, please feel free to leave a comment in this post.
UPDATE 6-5-2008
John responded:
Nitin, just out of curiosity, how many employees does your company have?
“What John has described will likely result in the internal IT staff getting overwhelmed with day-to-day work and not having the time to think strategically about leveraging their IT assets.”
-After 10 years, it hasn’t yet………and I don’t think the amount of technology assets and useage will likely increase anywhere near as quickly over the next 10 years as it has over the last 10.“I honestly believe, however, that by bringing in outside technology partners, school districts can provide better IT services at lower cost than they can by going it alone.”
-I think this is what the “solution providers” just don’t understand about the smaller districts. There is no way a district with limited financial resources is going to continue to pay a full-time salary for a Technology Director that needs to outsource “his” work, which is an additional expenditure to the district. Because, when all is said an done, “partnering” with a vendor or provider, does not eliminate the need to have someone there all day, full-time. And if it did, what Tech Coordinator would in his right mind put himself out of a job?
My response:
Thank you for sharing your point of view. I think this is a fascinating discussion.
We have 4 offices in Canton, Cleveland, Columbus, and Detroit. We have ~75 employees.
I am a bit of a neophyte to the IT and “solutions provider” industry, and therefore find your comments extremely interesting.
In general, I believe having specialists in Citrix, VMWare, Security, etc. as needed is more effective than one “network admin” doing it all.
The mix of skill sets could add up to one full time person, but the district can potentially rely on a team of individuals instead of one single person.
Our assertion is that your team, with the right support, could likely support up to 3-4 surrounding districts.
I also think it makes a lot of sense to work with a solutions provider for specialized services such as an end-user help desk, remote monitoring, etc. that an individual IT department could not provide.
I encourage you to write on here or e-mail me at njulka-at-smartsolutionsonline.com or call my cell phone any time at 216-374-6723 to continue the discussion.
Bottom line: I believe there are important options you can consider that have nothing to do with being “put out of a job.”