Creating a Full-Time Sysadmin Position at a School?

Old_Mountain_Man asks: "I have been working at a K-8 school for the last two school years, as a volunteer through an Americorps program called the Montana Technology Corps. In theory, I am here to teach teachers and students how to use technology, but because of the need and my ability to do so, I have become an unofficial Systems Administrator. We also have a contracted Systems Admin that comes in once a week, and works 30 hours or so a month. After this year, the Tech Corps position will no longer be available to the school, so something needs to be done to keep the IT systems of the school functioning. I am going to propose to the school board that they create an official, full time systems administrator position, and to hire me for that job. Are there others out there that got their jobs similarly? How do you convince a board that they need to start budgeting for this? They have obviously taken the plunge to getting this technology in the school, so how do I convince them that they need somebody here to maintain it?" "We have about 375 students, and probably 40 or so staff that use the computers. We have a lab of 25 machines, workstations in each classroom, a laptop cart, four smart-boards, six networked printers, and six servers hosting files, applications, Exchange and an Isaserver. In all, this is about 170 machines that need to be taken care of. There's no way the contracted systems admin could keep up with this, while working only 30 hours a month, so I feel the school needs somebody here full time.

What I am looking for is specific information regarding how many IT support people are needed for this kind of setup. I wonder if there are papers/reports that break down how much support time is needed for different systems that I could take to the school board.

In addition any advice on how to shape my presentation to the board would be useful."

Comments

blah

[jesboat]

(First post, or am I slow?)

Take a look at the Massachusetts state-wide requirements for public schools-- if you were subject to them, you'd require at least one (maybe even two) full-time sysadmins per that many students (plus a few other people too). You could cite that as documentation for the validity of your proposal.

Some advice from the experienced

[JordanL]

I work in a large school district. Large enough that it has a central IT department, (which is where I work).

The closest position here to what your describing is what we call a "Site Technology Coordinator", who we have at most high schools and middle school that deal with most of the stuff our actual sys admins don't have time to deal with. (We moved the printer without telling the WAN team and now we can't print?)

First, for a school of around 400 or so, you shouldn't need more than one full time technology assitant, if you have the tools to properly manage the systems. We use ZENworks, which obviously is overkill for such a small scope, (we have 50,000 students we service though).

Our largest school has about 2,000 students and about 150-175 staff, and we still only have one full time STC. We do however have area techs as well.

For your situation, the best way to convince a board is comparative analysis. See how other school districts or other schools fare, and what they do. Like us for instance. Your needed staff will probably total one full time Admin, and at least one part-time tech, (such as a TOSA [Teacher on Special Assignment], or teacher with extra responsibilities).

If you need more info, e-mail me.

Tech Staffing in Michigan

[Anonymous Coward]

I work as the Computer Tech for a school district in South-East Michigan. We currently have about 1.0 FTE for each 180 computers but we are laying off people for next year. In trying to investigate what other districts are doing it is clear the choice is based on what they can afford - not what would be useful or ideal.

A couple notes
-Most technology plan resources recommend 1 FTE for every 100-200 computers, or 1 FTE for every 300-500 closely managed computers (Thin clients for instance)

-There are clear trade-offs in terms of response time and tech support. Document the current repair turnaround time, and number of failures and compare it to what would be expected with different levels of staffing. Let the elected school board decide if it is worth taking funding from teachers to get computers fixed faster

-It is possible to survive with much less support if you are REALLY WILLING as a district to reduce the flexibility of computer us (for instance no support for use other than office or a browser, no non-district software installed, using things like deep-freeze, etc

Money

[Rinisari]

You're going to have to convince them that they're hosed without someone taking care of these machines. You're also going to have to see if they have the money in their budget to hire someone full-time, and if you can afford what they're willing to pay.

Starting talking to board members individually. Invite them to see the technology infrastructure and make sure they know how many man-hours it takes to maintain the system. Don't just leave if they don't appear to be listening to you. It's times like these that a sudden illness or death in the family would really come in handy (OK, so that's a bit morbid).

Write a proposal for the position and a justification for it. If you live in the district, they're somewhat obligated to at least listen to you. Just take your time and work through the system.

Use your own data to support your claim

[davidwr]

Your own data is far more valuable than anything any of us can give you.

Take the part-time guy to lunch and find out exactly what he does and how long it takes him to do it.

Add the hours you put in.

Then make adjustments for the efficiency of having one person do the whole job.

This gives you a starting point.

If that's not enough for a 40-hour-week job, make adjustments for tasks that are currently done by teachers that can be offloaded to you, as well as tasks that are not getting done that will benefit the teachers and students "if only we had the manpower."

Finally, to short-circuit the question of "can we do any of this with volunteer labor," make a realistic assessment of how much work volunteers could do, and add in the cost of training and coordinating the volunteers.

One more thing to consider:
As a full-time sysadmin, you can also run a serious, skill-building high-school "computer club" and if you have the credentials, teach certification classes to high school students after school or in the evenings. Parents love this.

Best of luck.

By the way, the part-time guy might want the job you are trying to create, and the school board might just hire him for the position. If you two put your heads together and he gives you a good reference, maybe his other clients will hire you.