Ask Slashdot: Best Practices For Maintaining IT Policy In K-12 Public Education?

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @11:04AM from the good-luck-with-that dept.

First time accepted submitter El Fantasmo writes "I work in public education, K-12, for a small, economically shaky, low performing school district. What are some good or effective tactics for getting budget controllers to stop bypassing the IT boss/department? We sometimes we end up with LOW end MS Win 7 Home laptops, that basically can't get on our network (internet only) or be managed. The purchaser refuses to return them for proper setups. Unfortunately, IT is currently under the 'asst. superintendent of curriculum and instruction,' who has no useful understanding of maintaining and acquiring IT resources and lets others make poor IT purchasing decisions, by bypassing the IT department, and dips into IT funds when their pet project budgets run low. How can this be reversed when you get commands like 'make it work' and the budget is effectively $0?"

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Re:I work for a public school district by ghbpiper · 2012-02-22 11:56 · Score: 5, Informative

I do as well. We've been able to save TONS by purchasing off-lease systems at 10 cents on the dollar WITH 3 year warranties. The bigger issue is that the wrong person is selecting and specifying technology purchases. Talk to the Supt or CBO. And yes try to make them look good, if you can. All computer, networking, AND software purchase should have to pass through the IT dept for evaluation. To not do so is foolish at best.