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?"

Comments

You left out the question you really want to ask

[general_re]

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.

"Also, hypothetically speaking, how would someone go about getting in and changing grades? Strictly hypothetically, of course."

SD IT 2K

[42Penguins]

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.

a terrible job

[Greventls]

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.

Answers From A School District IT

[JordanL]

Hey, I'm a former student a current employee of a large school district, and I think I can answer some of your questions:

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 ... 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.

Network manager - 17-school K-12 school district

[siredgar]

I'm the network mangler for a medium sized school system - 17 schools, 11,000 students, 3500 network nodes.

There are a few challenges that I can think of that deviate from what I encountered in the private sector:

1. Content filtering. Though you probably find content filtering of some sort at most companies, being in a school system I'm *required* to have content filtering by CIPA (Child Internet Protection Act) or risk our federal funding and thereby my job. Unfortunately the extent of what/how you filter is ill-defined. Also unlike a company where as a rule sane adults realize they can get fired for surfing pornography, I have a few thousand middle and high school kids whose hormones are going nuts and often don't consider or care about the consequences. Now, I'm a bleeding heart liberal and censoring by and large goes against my grain, but I believe preventing young children from accidentally being exposed to something they weren't expecting (whitehouse.com instead of whitehouse.gov, for instance) is a good thing. However, if a pubescent child is determined to go looking I don't believe you can stop him from finding it. We could deploy draconian measures to stop it, but then you limit the value of the Internet (example: We blocked google images because there wasn't an easy way to prevent them from switching off the safe-search mode). We (IT) also bounce all requests to block a site that isn't obvious pornography to the curriculum folks for a ruling. That leads to decisions I don't always agree with, such as blocking plannedparenthood.com among others. Content filtering in a K-12 school system is a touchy business, balancing needs/desires of kids, faculty, parents, school board, and CIPA.

2. Funding/staffing. I used to work for the Family Channel. When a new IT project was floated, an adequate budget was attached and off you went. In the school system new IT projects come up all the time, often driven from other departments, but insufficient funding/staffing is attached to it in many cases. Work tends to pile on already busy people and so you get people who are very good at what they do yet they end up doing a half-baked job because they simply can't get to it all. We have a networking staff of 3 people to handle all telecommunications/networking/security (cameras) in the county, and for the 6 years prior to this July, only had 2 on the team. This is probably the most frustrating part of my job. We also have to deal with bidding procedures. Anything over $10,000 has to be put out to bid and approved by the school board. That makes something we might normally do in a few days to a couple of weeks (evaluate and decide to purchase a product) take a month or more. You also end up justifying an IT decision to people who might not understand the nuances of why the lower bidder isn't the best solution.

3. Atmosphere. This is why I work for the school system. It's *so* much more relaxed and rewarding than working in the private sector. Work in the private sector and you're making money for someone. Work in a school system and you really can give something back to society. It may sound cheesy, and certainly isn't my only motivation, but it really feels good to use your talents somewhere where chasing money isn't the goal. When the kids go "it's the computer man!" and light up when you fix their computer it's a rewarding warm fuzzy. I also get to work in jeans and comfortable shirts, work 8 - 4:30, get 2 weeks off for Christmas, 1 week for spring break, 1 week for fall break, 10 vacation days a year, 9 or so sick days, 2 personal days, and all the standard school holidays. My boss is fine if I want to go grab an hour at my daughter's school to watch her school play. It's a really personal life/family friendly work atmosphere. Of course, there are downsides as well -- for instance I often have worked over spring break or Christmas break to do things while the faculty/kids are out, but that's not unique to the school system environment. Just didn't want to give the impression it was all wine and ro