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Being School District Admin?
Bananatree3 asks: "I am a high schooler in a fairly large school district, and have always wondered what it is like to manage a large school network. What is it like to be a school district admin? What kind of unique things do you have to do that are outside the realm of 'normal' IT departments? When is the most hectic/slow time for you? How big of a network do you manage? Also, do you have any favorite stories about being a school district IT admin?"
I helped manage a mid-size district (2400+ total) with about 400 computers on the network when I was in high school. One thing that made it interesting was that the REAL admin was almost blind, and gone half the year for eye surgery. I remember a lot of manual labor. I was carrying cases/monitors/other items between 4 buildings most days. In the elementary school, when you go in you're a magician. If you're lucky, you step in during a snack break with a particularly generous teacher. In the middle school rooms, you're a nerd, and hear 12 year olds talking about their "skills" in fixing things. In high school, maybe you know some people, but still feel out of place. Teachers, for the most part, know nothing about the workings of their computers. They know their username and password (because it's written on their monitors) and how to check e-mail, and that's about it. They attract spyware like honey-covered shit attracts flies. Kids are pretty much harmless, save for physical vandalism to cases. The beginning of the year and right after Christmas break were crazy. Also, whenever they got a technology grant shipment was hell. 2 people unpacking, labling, and distributing 60 workstations in a day?! Not to mention clearing out old ones. Thankfully, the admin made network images of each model, and all the lab computers ran DeepFreeze. Things outside normal IT are explaining to very small children how the computers do and do not work. Although, it's probably similar in the real world.
I work for a fairly small school district in a rural community. As far as the managment of the systems goes, the lack of automation for things causes the most headaches. Other than that it's mainly sitting in my office watching the servers. Every now and again one of our drives will fail. Now, as far as things that bug me that aren't really part of my job go, the student management software is hell. It's poorly made and all that, but, even more annoying is that faculty doesn't know how to use it, and we get constant calls on "how do I set whatever code" and I don't really know. We paid to send ALL of our faculty to courses to learn how to use it, but not the IT staff. So, we have to tell them to just call the company. They get pretty upset when we say that. My manager is ... unique. He's one of the most shady people I've ever met in my life, and I grew up with drug dealers/addicts. He drives me insane. I'd say working for a school district isn't probably too much different than working in any other IT department, other than our customers are students and teachers.
I'm not a school admin, but I know some friends who are interns at some public schools. They claim it is the worst job ever. Besides being underfunded, they have to put up with all sorts of bullshit. Employees can get fired, students can't. Teachers typically don't watch the computers, so the vandals always get away with it. Filtering content is extremely important. They have to make sure nothing bad is on the network and the kids can't get to any questionable sites. The teachers act like students. When the teachers are being taught how to use programs, they act like students. They won't pay attention, talk to eachother, take cellphone calls, etc. The budgets are typically terrible. Though that is usually evident in the hardware. There isn't much to administer anyway. It doesn't matter if servers go down, etc. The computers will only have microsoft office on them in most situations. Usually you'll have a firewall, a mail server for the faculty, and then a file server.
Hey, I'm a former student a current employee of a large school district, and I think I can answer some of your questions:
... how do they know ... can they see everything we type?" They walked over to the technician who had controlled the computer and asked, "Can the district monitor what your computer is doing?" He smiled and answered, "They can monitor everything." Heh.
What is it like to be a school district admin? What kind of unique things do you have to do that are outside the realm of 'normal' IT departments?
One of the things that's a bit quirky, but not much different than most other IT departments is how the users are made to interact with the personel.
Often times you will get a teacher who has done something to their compuer that is outside the scope of the service agreement which the department has with the school, and then wants the IT department to fix it for free.
Because school districts work on tax budgets, our method of dealing with purchases and such is interesting as well. The IT department makes administrative decisions without consulting the school board, and thus, is not allowed, in any part, to be unionized.
We recieve a budget from the school board that we use to pay for our costs, (like buying parts or laptops or a new server), and then the schools, out of their budget, pay the general fund back for any services they buy from us. Certain services, (like internet, printing, etc.), are provided for free. Others cost the school money that they pay back to the district.
When is the most hectic/slow time for you?
By far, the most hectic time is September-November. All the new things that got implemented over the summer are being used for the first time, and things go wrong.
How big of a network do you manage?
I can't really give specifics... but its upwards a quarter million computers over a hundred or so square miles.
Also, do you have any favorite stories about being a school district IT admin?
We use Novell ZEN Works around the district, and by far, the most common misconception among users is that 'snapping' an application, (a network driven installation), means they no longer need the CD to use the program. *rolls eyes* We distribute applications, we don't crack them.
The students usually provide the best stories though. One of the onsite technicians was in a classroom removing sound drivers, (the students had been wasting time in class listening to things and the teacher requested we fix that), and noticed a student attempting to circumvent the security policy and reinstall his sound drivers. The technician remote controlled his computer from across the room and typed into the command prompt "Don't do anything stupid". The kids in the class gathered round in astonishment saying things like "they can't do that
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I was in high school (3 years ago) and was tapped by out district admin to help him, so I got to see what he sees from the viewpoint of you (the question asker). Here's what I found: Hectic times of the year: beginning and ending of every semester. Between the influx of new students that had to have user accounts and e-mail accounts created for them, and removing the ones that had graduated from the previous semester to keep the accounts right with the students in the district, those times were really straining. Also, the student grade/attendance system (STI, that piece of shit) would really put a huge load on our servers from all the data going in and out of it as well. Network size: We had ~400 computers in the high school that I was in charge of, that was 6 separate labs, and at least 1 computer in each classroom, most had 2. Then there were 4 big IBM servers and 2 smaller ones (big: district webserver, STI server, teacher e-mail server, teacher file server; small: backup file server, student e-mail server) You are also more than likely some form of tech support for every one that you manage. For one of my 4 periods a day my last three semesters at high school, I did the tech support and management stuff. Most of the time it was fixing problems for the faculty who had hosed soemthing up on accident, or fixing something a student did on purpose. It was fun doing the work. So fun, I've found the same thing at the university I am a student at, helping to manage another network, for the college that houses Computer Science and 5 other departments. Bigger network (4x), more headaches, but alot more leeway in what I can do, and something that may turn into a job offer when I graduate soon.
It's not that I'm asking the big questions, it's that I'm asking lots of small ones.