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Ask Slashdot: Best Practices For Maintaining IT Policy In K-12 Public Education?
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?"
Just make up some bullshit about how only machine brand XYZ will work for us. All the others can be hacked by predators to take pictures of the children. Use FUD to your advantage.
I know this sounds like a stock answer, but you will get much more bang for your buck with Linux.
You need to have the licensing right for the software that you have.
http://www.microsoft.com/education/en-us/buy/licensing/Pages/schoolenrollment.aspx
But right now you need to tell the people who say 'make it work' how big the fine is for not have the licensing right.
There is a reason people are bypassing you. From my experience, it is because you either are not performing well, or they think that you are not performing well. If it is the latter, you should raise awareness with regard to backups, security, etc. You may also want at look at prices. For example, recently I have seen ridiculous internal prices for a few GBs of file-server storage accessible to a complete department.
Of course, if it is the former, then you are screwed and people are bypassing you so that they can get their jobs done. In that case you should think about abandoning the current IT department and building up a new one with people that understand that they are service providers.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Have you considered purchasing your software through Techsoup. Microsoft software is virtually free (last i remember something like 10 to 20 bucks per copy of windows, similarly cheap for server OSes as well) so long as your organization qualifies. I am assuming you want to integrate everything on a Windows domain...
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
If it's literally as bad as you describe, your intended function is to fail as spectacularly as possible in order to be the fall guy. You can't gather meaningful evidence to convince or refute the decision-makers, and no one is going to believe you when you claim you're being asked to do the impossible by the unreasonable.
Leave. The only reason they want you there is that they want you on the bridge when the ship runs aground.
When failure's not an options (because it's mandatory), you're under no obligation to remain involved with that fiasco, and short of blackmail-level evidence, you have no way to change course anyway.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
If you can, start by cutting off access to devices that you don't have control or at least knowledge of, i.e., any device that hasn't been brought in for proper setup (where I work we achieve this through central static DHCP). Also, tell your boss that you cannot do your job if (a) you have no money to do it and (b) no one lets you do it by bypassing you at every opportunity.
Run with your hair on fire!
Unless these machines are members of a domain, remote management will be a *major* PITA if not impossible without 3rd party tools. Working stand-alone workgroup machines sucks balls from an IT admin point of view. They also tend to suck up vast amounts of bandwidth youtubing and playing games. You can forget content filtering via DNS content filtering as students will end up using their own public DNS forwarders. It can sorta be done. But locking shit down through a managed firewall will take weeks if not months of tweaking and tuning. It will absolutely be a cat and mouse game between you and the students. Again, you can't manage their machines with GPOs and whatnot.
Simple solution. Ban all laptops and have them use iPads instead. Focus on IP white listing at the firewall level. No viruses, everything is the same experience. And parents foot the bill for the units.
Life is not for the lazy.
Shut it all down. Continuing to run it in that condition's just going to degrade it further. Send the kids home with a note explaining what the incompetent !@#$hole forced you to do to their kids. Cc: the note to the news media.
Oh, and get another job. You'll need it. Hell, you need it now.
A !@#$storm like this can only blow up in your face. No point putting the solution off until it does.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
If your department doesn't have a mission/vision statement, then you have no standard to complain about not being able to meet. You also have no direction, and frankly, probably don't deserve to get funding for anything anyway. If you do have a mission statement, and you're currently unable to meet its objectives, then point it out. If you don't have leadership support, go to the citizens. Have them elect a school board which gives priority to educational technology. This is not that hard to do, but it does require a steadfast commitment. The National Ed-Tech Plan is also a good resource to argue from. Seriously, there are so many funding opportunities for low-income school districts in this country that there's no excuse for wallowing in your current predicament.
dips into IT funds when their pet project budgets run low
Given the fact that you work in the public sector, you may wish to consider obtaining anything and everything available on budgetary policy for your school district, county, state, etc. It may turn out that what you're observing on the fiscal side of things actually represents clear misappropriation of funds. If that's the case, bringing it to the attention of people three or four levels up in the chain of command may have an interesting effect, and perhaps a detailed letter to a state representative would bring uncomfortable attention to those mismanaging the funds.
Write failed: Broken pipe
This is a management/politics question. Gaining resources for your own department is what a good manager or VP does every day. IT people are fundamentally bad at this because they give answers that are technical and correct, yet are irrelevant in a financial or political context. While fighting the good fight, terms like "PCI", "HIPAA", and "BSA" will help you much more than "IPSEC" or "DNS".
Learn political skills, work on establishing trust relationships with the other players rather than just being a technical grunt, and remember that if you're not at the table, you're on the menu.
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
Run with your hair on fire!
Unless these machines are members of a domain, remote management will be a *major* PITA if not impossible without 3rd party tools. Working stand-alone workgroup machines sucks balls from an IT admin point of view. They also tend to suck up vast amounts of bandwidth youtubing and playing games. You can forget content filtering via DNS content filtering as students will end up using their own public DNS forwarders. It can sorta be done. But locking shit down through a managed firewall will take weeks if not months of tweaking and tuning. It will absolutely be a cat and mouse game between you and the students. Again, you can't manage their machines with GPOs and whatnot.
Simple solution. Ban all laptops and have them use iPads instead. Focus on IP white listing at the firewall level. No viruses, everything is the same experience. And parents foot the bill for the units.
I don't the schools have the funds for ipods and even then the hardware / software to manage them.
Also buying software for lot's of ipods is a big mess as well.
Bitch, constantly, in writing... preferably notorized.
That way, when the shit inevitably hits the fan and your bureaucratic slave-driver comes looking for a fall guy, you have documentation that shows you tried your ass off to get them to change their idiotic ways, but they staunchly refused.
Been there, done that; still got screwed, but at least by documenting everything I managed to take the asshat who wouldn't listen down with me.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Is there any possibility that the laptops could be converted to run Linux? Usually Linux can be make to work very well on older and more resourced constrained devices. If the IT department knows nothing about Linux or you must have Win7 then it might not be a good option - otherwise why not explore this option.
You could get everything you need for zero cost: an operating system, LibreOffice, browsers, decent networking (although that may depend on the wireless chipsets), LDAP etc. Plus, you won't have to lock them down so lots of games get played on them (apart from TuxRacer).
Plenty of schools run Macs - at least the ones near me, so the "they only understand Windows" argument is invalid. Linux could be made to work well for school-type tasks without you having to get anything other than the budget for one competent sysadmin.
You really shouldn't be settling for anything below a high-end netbook or a low-end thinkpad.
I mean it, keep some terminal server boxen around for the stuff that really must run on windows. Pitch it as a cost savings and standardization plan. Everything running end user windows should be using deep freeze or similar so you revert back to the known good state every reboot. Linux runs on just about anything you throw at it and lets face it most lab PC's need to run a very limited set of software.
No sir I dont like it.
to the lowest common denominator. an active directory would be nice, but if you have control over the network then you essentially are 'the internet.'
id consider repurposing the older hardware for something thats still useful (flagrant *nix plug, sorry) to students and teachers as a general access desktop that gets its configuration once a day or once a week and can still be used for teaching programming or proctoring an online exam. more advanced systems can be granted access to the sensitive side of the infrastructure like AD shares and "the network" as windows knows it.
as for people bypassing the helpdesk, locking down network ports and wireless AP's is a good way to get to know these guys. make sure you approach them with a smile and a bit of sympathy as theyre likely only being clandestine because theyve been abused in the past. consider having a power-users group of faculty or maybe students too that can help eachother if you're overloaded, and always accept their feedback (even if it isnt really that great.)
Good people go to bed earlier.
Let me explain how it works, will any of this make the person in charge look good(politics)? Telling your district purchaser to stop the madness will just lead to negative political impact on the person making the call unless there is greater easier political capital to gain by making the call. Until someones ass is held to the fire for the mistakes (which is rarely the actual one making them) nothing will change short term. Now lets talk on how to make school district politics work, forget the current person in charge, they already have their established friends and people who they owe favors. Instead look about 3-5 years in the future and figure out who might be in charge then and gather their favor as they are clawing their way to the top, these people will be much more willing to listen and have a higher probability of effecting the change you are looking for.
Your first step, get your butt out to the school sites and work closely with the principals and give them what they want and need. These are those people who you will see in the positions you are looking to effect 3-5 years in the future, and most of them will remember the favors you did and the logic you provided those years ago.
Welcome to school district politics, its slow, its annoying but with enough patience you can get it to work.
Good Punch the idiot in charge in the face every time you get stuck with junk technology. Effective This one's trickier. It sounds as though your system's policy structure is ill-understood by your "asst. superintendent of curriculum and instruction." On what basis just he justify overriding the placement of responsibility for purchases from IT to your budget controllers? Take the issue to your school board with clear explanations of the wasted monies that result from buying unusable computers. Explain to the board the failure to provide required educational materials. Convince them to clarify and set up or reaffirm the needed policies and establish or approve procedures to maintain oversight and enforcement of the correct practices. If your board seems recalcitrant, take your arguments upstream to the commissioners (or other public officials) who control the board. Finally, the court of last resort is public opinion; get media coverage to expose the waste and failure of the current practices. If it's too risky to your employment to attempt these things directly, recruit parents to be your public interface and feed them the needed facts.
Install the correct version of Windows 7 and send them the bill.
And pay for Win7 Ent licenses from where? Own pocket?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Sadly, it's not just education that's suffers the "make-it-work with $0" mindset. This along the lines of "the beatings will continue until morale improves" except it's "the budget will not be funded until results are achieved." This is a management problem, not an IT problem. You need someone intelligent who speaks management to make it understood that they have to have realistic and definable IT goals which includes a willingness to fund them on your side.
I don't know much about your community but if you're lucky enough to have a grant-savvy PTO, you might be able to get them to write a grant application for the funding but, again, you need to be very clear about what the goals are and how the hardware/software you want will achieve them.
Also your local board of ed and board of finance may be interested in the dipping into the IT budget when pet project funds run low. They tend to frown on stuff like that.
Make Network Maintenance an elective!
Amen.
As this poster says, mixed with some previous posts.. the people are the problem.
"they" - the users or folks buying these doorstop machines are doing it because they think they have to. .. then your problem isn't scary enough to throw money at.
bosses / beancounters : if nobody is getting raped, killed, or sued
You are in a key position to make a difference.
In addition to your technology know-how, you also have the position of being inside the system.
Most of us IT folks have to learn on the fly. Just change your tactic a little.
Learn the laws and policies that your State, county, school district, etc needs to live by. Put together a binder if that helps you.
Student info needs to be protected under many US laws.. learn them, quote them, hang them in your office, sign your email with it.. anything that helps.
In addition to having your boss - who is obviously in a position to control some money (just not the way you think it should be done).. you are allowed, and probably encouraged to participate in School Board meetings, Educator's Union or other trade council meetings, and technology groups ( like ACM education SIG) .
Learn to speak the bureaucratic language. Heck, I bet you need a signature to request a vacation day. Get a signature every time you make an adjustment or installation on a computer. Not just when you want to - all the time. This becomes a "policy".
When you see that users are trying to work around the system - something isn't working. The IT department is only there to make the job of education (and administration) easier. When you help , you are probably not noticed. When you impede, then you become the big problem everyone will blame.
Make it work. You are on /. Have you ever heard of Linux, Samba, Open Office, Apache?
Get open source software, install it on as many machines as you can - then put all the work on a server that you keep secure.
If the users can get what they need on your website, they won't need high-end machines.
Watch your system logs, and document the heck out of things. Make sure users know they are being logged.
( raises your visibility without becoming THE problem)
If your dept has money to spend and bail out other people's pet projects, then you are doing it wrong.
Start the year out with a planning meeting. Discuss how your department will most effectively use the budget you have.
Put these goals on paper, and periodically refer back to them.
This gives you concrete items to work towards, and the money is all "spent" on paper.
If another department has a project / problem / cash shortfall that impacts your IT department, then you have the backup to say,
" Okay, if we deviate from our original plans, do you want me to lower standards or cut out project 1, 2, or 3 ? "
For as long as you keep this job, think of it like a small boutique store that you manage.
Everything is documented, the customer is always right, and nothing is free.
--If nothing else, that will cut your frustration and headache levels.
Let them wallow in their own failure.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Quit.
You'll score a job at a place which values your expertise, probably with higher pay. The institution you worked for will go under, not because you left, but because it's fairly obvious that it's already borderline, and the people in charge have their heads up their asses -> Misallocation of appropriated funds is not looked kindly upon by the press, and following the fomenting scandal, the state may be forced to shutdown the school. Since it's already a low-performing school, an argument will be made that the state's SAT scores will rise by getting rid of this particular institution, and after a fight by the local Teacher's union (you need a leg to stand on to win these kinds of battles, and they won't have one), some dagger work will be pushed through, and the problem (the school) will be made to "go away."
You probably feel for these kids, and you want to help them out; however, you can't. You have neither the time nor the resources necessary to change the pervading mentality that IT is the asst. supervisor's trick. Given that, the best you can do is hope that their future will not be terribly impacted by the ensuing shit-storm, and get yourself out of the line of fire.
And be sure to document all further interactions with people of interest, in either written or electronic form. Keep a nightly off-site backup of your emails, as you may be charged at some point for complicity in this madness, and will need an alibi. Remember, a bureaucrat will not hesitate to throw an underling under a bus to save himself, and no one believes the accused.
I am John Hurt.
IT is just like a car....you can run for a while...until you need gas. No gas, no energy to move the car. Pushing the car is against the purpose of the car. - Establish a plan with milestones and goals. Offer alternatives. Use open source. If somebody insist in $0 budget, ask him/her advice in how to do that and if he/she want to join you to make it happen. I don't know how to run a car with an empty tank with no gas. I've used LTSP once and it's cool to boot a class of 40 diskless PCs with PXE. Using a 100 Mbps network, they even boot much faster than any MS product. A little tricky for the graphic config. http://www.ltsp.org/
I have worked in EDU for quite a few years now, I was involved with a K-12 before (consulting) and have been at two higher ed jobs (one in central IT, one in research)
a) Go open source and simply tell them: no more Windows because your licensing doesn't check out (licensing for small-to-mid schools is mighty expensive even if you get all the discounts). You have to not only get your licensing for your machines (which are ridiculously low to pull in your non-technical staff at a low point sometimes $10 or $20 for Professional versions or bundles with Office and Windows licenses) but a heap load of servers and CAL's to get everything on the Microsoft-side to work together (which ended up in one of the negotiations I was in averaging $25/FTE/service (Exchange, Sharepoint, Forefront and AD (the standard suite) was thus $100/FTE) + several $100's per server (~$300 for W2K3 Standard back then).
b) Spec a lot higher than you need. Sure, someone (you) can go to Dell/HP and spec out a $500 machine but you should budget for that machine to cost $1500, your purchasing department (if there is one) will balk and negotiate you down to $1000 and you'll get a decent machine. I have to do this all the time in research because computer gear is the first thing that gets axed out of the budgets. For ballpark figures in research: budget your workstations at 2x the actual cost, servers at 3x the actual cost, storage at 4x the actual cost and you'll usually barely be able to afford what you need.
c) If you really need MS Office or a 'commercial' offering because the manager/purchasing/principal wants someone to yell at when it breaks down talk to an Apple rep and have them spec out your environment including all software licensing, they're pretty honest about it unlike Microsoft as the client is simple and included in your hardware cost (no 'upgrade' or 'enterprise' required), Server is unlimited clients and cheap (and again, your organization qualifies regardless), no CAL's, no FTE calculations, no hidden fees, no need for extra licenses or site licenses just to evade their auditing department (I'm your customer Microsoft, not your serf), you'll get a rep that has experience with K-12, free seminars and classes. They're great and easy to manage and integrate well with Windows even though they may require an overhaul of your entrenched Windows admins that got hired because they're the friend of the cousin of the principal.
d) Get better negotiation skills and set up vendors against each other. Dell for example will RAISE their prices or remove their cheapest offerings for K-12 (especially existing customers) unless you can pit two sales people against each other. They can sometimes go to great lengths to reduce their cost. Alternatively, I have found that if you need a boatload of generic computers, you might even be cheaper getting a local company to custom build you a boatload of your specced out computers. I have worked with a company that custom builds laptops and desktops (if you need more than 50) and they have local, free customer and technical service whenever it breaks down and they're cheaper than the Dell/HP offerings and they build only to what you need. I needed for example specific workstations (2 nVidia cards with at least 1GB VRAM, Xeon CPU's, 16GB ECC RAM) and HP would sell me machines that came with the choice of Quadro ($$$) or an empty slot while Dell would in the same lineup have 1 month a shipment of nVidia cards and the next a shipment with ATI (now AMD) cards and then all of a sudden they would send me a machine with ECC RAM but the motherboard didn't support the ECC functionality.
e) Look elsewhere to cut your budget. Do you really need Cisco gear? How about HP or Netgear even? Do you really need service plans? Do you really need Microsoft software on your server? LDAP is free, Samba is free and both are just as easy to manage as AD with the proper tools. And for the whiners that say "how about Global Policies" - do you really use that crap? In an educational environment you want to be
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
There is often a disconnect between perception and reality in school environments (many others as well, but I've seen it magnified in schools). The real job before you is getting their perceptions to catch up to reality. Do you know how much equipment your IT staff is responsible for maintaining? Do you know how many hours are spent on particular tasks? Setting up an inventory and work order/ticket system, and having the staff use it allows you to produce hard numbers instead of "Somewhere around 'X'". That kind of data can help your IT boss reason with the supervisor, or the board.
You may have a crappy situation with existing equipment, but make the best of it you can while advising school teachers and administrators that this is the best that can be done with sub-par equipment. Giving them a little bit of knowledge (equipment is sub-par, but we're precluded from buying better because of bureaucracy) can help mobilize the squeaky wheels (every district has them) that won't stop nagging until changes are made.
Solutions? Does your IT department oversee/maintain solutions that contribute to your Districts bottom line? Things that improve test scores or save money? If not, get some. When you get technology working for your district, you make your department more relevant. Saving money on power by ensuring classroom computers shut down is a simple money saver that contributes to the bottom line.
Documentation. I just heard you groan, but building a documentation system can be a real blessing. Wiki's have worked well for me, but use whatever works best in your environment. It can be a reminder for ubscure stuff you may have to handle from time to time, and it can also be an awesome show and tell piece for people to understand that you don't just re-install the OS.
Remember that policy is all good and fine, but when the boss says jump, you jump. Even if it breaks policy. If it's a security issue, explain it to them, and if you judge necessary, require the exception to be made in some form that can be converted to hard-copy. Often they can tell between you being seriously concerned for District resources, or being a prideful hard-ass. Pick your battles carefully. When they can see you are willing to bend when possible, they will respect you more when you don't, even if they over-rule you.
I see a number of people saying "quit", but these are the kind of challenges that can make a resume shine. Obviously you care about the job, otherwise you would have asked how to transfer from a K-12 job =D. [/soapbox]
Based on your description, it seems like you have a cursory idea of the orgainizational structure of your school district, but very little knowlege about how things get purchased, out of where, and who is responsible for what. Based on your description, I have you pegged as a support tech, and there is 1 maybe 2 other people in the IT department (like a Technology Coordinator/Director and maybe a Network Manager). No?
In truth, you should be celebrating the fact that your department is under the Assoc. Supe of C&I. Tech needs a department, and only the biggest districts are willing to make the Director an assistant/associate supe, so you either get to be under C&I or under Business. Your purchasing issues might get better under business, but the C&I side can get more things done, and is better for coordinating implementation. And can be used in your situation here if you know what to do.
You make mention of your "purchaser" which I am also going to assume means someone at a site. This is typically how things go wrong. See, not everything is handled through the district budget and depending on your superintendent, schools frequently have significant lattitude in making their own descisions and purchases. Most of the time, not such a big deal. For tech: big deal. Now here's where you need your director of C&I, because that person is the direct pipeline into the sites, and the principals will listen to that person. So you only have to convince one person that the purchases are bad, and then it gets filtered out. Do you have weekly C&I or Educational Services meetings? You should. This is the place to get yourself (or really, your director) on the adgenda and demonstrate the problem. Don't explain it, it won't do any good talking.
Now it also seems like you need to learn how school budgets work, because if you are public K-12 there is very little ability to take from one budget and move to another. Something else is going on there, and you probably aren't important enough to be privy to what's going on. Budget swipes have been prevelent in schools over the past 2 years, and part of it is because states are withholding categorical funds that were originally promised to balance their own budgets. Just last week we were informed that we wouldn't be getting $72k of categorical money from the state that was part of this year's budget, and then we had to start shuffling, because you can't make major changes in the middle of the school year. If you want to work with those in charge, rather than against them, try dialing back the mistrust.
As far as no money, I'm going to guess that there is money out there. What is your ERATE filing? It might take some work, but most districts are leaving federal money on the table.
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?"
Grow a pair.
Seriously. You're not asserting yourself. You're letting your assistant sup do whatever they want with your budget. And he/she's probably doing it because you're not putting your foot down.
I work in a small rural school as a tech coordinator, so from my experience, let me gather a few facts from your post. First thing's first: if you have an assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, your district's not small, as in small-small. Practically any district that's less than 2,000 students K-12 won't have any assistant superintendents. Maybe you're not LAUSD, but you're not small. Given those numbers, you are probably not the only guy in your IT department, either. I'd give a rough estimate of somewhere between 500 to 1,500 machines in your district. Long story short, your district has money. Maybe it's not flowing to your department, but your district has money.
Now, those machines need support, or they fail. Support costs money, both in parts and in human resources. You can easily communicate to your asst sup the poor return on investment he/she will get if they continue to underfund your department. If you want to illustrate the point more clearly, grab a faulty power supply out of your storage room (not one that fails outright, but one that has some inconsistent rails and a good heaping of dust bunnies to cause overheating), break into your sup's office and swap power supplies. When he/she calls you back the next day to complain, explain how you don't have any funding to repair the computer.
But that's the passive-aggressive approach. What you really should do is get in there and assert to the ignoramus that poor purchasing decisions and lack of funding are diminishing the quality of the tech equipment in the building. If you want to be professional about it, cite observations you've made about increased demands on the computer resources over the last few years and increasing complaints from teachers and staff about how current tech is not meeting those needs. Explain the financial angle of how failure to comply with software licensing issues can be very detrimental long-term. Explain how buying equipment incompatible with the current infrastructure is a waste of money and human resources.
And if he/she doesn't listen, go to the superintendent directly. If he/she doesn't listen, go to the school board. And if they don't listen, go to a different school.
But seriously, grow a pair.
Make sure that ALL technology purchases require IT department approval and evaluation. This is what we do. Also, we report to the business dept, not curriculum, which works better since the CBO has a better grasp of "technology" (K12-speak for IT/DP/Stuff with das blinken lights).
There can also be a disclaimer to this: "All technology purchases NOT approved by IT are unsupported." Although making the rule, and enforcing it are two different things.
1.Linux is free.
2.If your new to it, start with some package distro like Ubuntu or Fedora, super easy to start with...learn from there. trust me it's easier than you think
3.Linux distro works with Windows network environment
4. Most,if not all, have free software alternative that can stand up to the big popular software like Microsoft office for example (openoffice is one)
5.It's more secure for your users. In a sense that once it's deployed they can't change important system files or settings, they need administrator access for that
6.You can customize lots of things like the look, the interface and lots of other settings
7.Linux does have a Gui interface like Windows so the switch is easier than you think
8.Linux as a great, wonderful, hell better support than Windows if you ask me. Lots of distros have wiki's, forums, website with support section.
Note: Ubuntu is nearly as easy to use as Windows when it comes to it's use sometimes...just click next 20 times and your done installing..I swear. Super easy transition tip: Install vmware, then install Ubuntu in vmware. Install most programs you need. If you can't find some, find alternative (you will find some, your a geek like us), once your confortable enough, deploy some linux PC's in some department for testing and let it test for some weeks.
I can't even remotely understand how you can have budget issues, but can afford windows. Heck, if I wanted to buy windows 7 pro, it would cost 50% of what my current laptop costs. Granted: it's getting rather old, but that's exactly what happens when you have a low budget.
Can't you just format it with something that's *free* if budget seems to be the issue for everyone?
(I don't even mean FLOSS, just free as in freeware).
Remove the engine from his car. Demand he "make it work". Refuse to give back the engine or to pay for a new one.
Oh, and quit your job because there isn't a damn thing you can do to fix this problem. You are fucked.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Also ghost is the old way of doing stuff and lot's of places still do stuff the old way hell XP is still out there on lot's of systems.
I read an interesting write up on Chromebooks in education today. The article discusses tech for students... not sure if this is what you're looking for, but they really cut down on their support costs.
samzenpus,
Stop making it work. It's the only answer. Your cleaver ability to make it work (somehow) only reinforces their "vision" that you don't know what you're talking about and ask for too much. Do be careful, and don't do this when a really obvious workaround is available. I'm taking about spending a week or two head scratching to come up with an answer is what you should stop or at least slow down. Don't make the slowdown suddenly, make it over a year.
Also see this post: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2686997&cid=39131125 - and take it to heart. Just happened to me. I quit rather than take the "death march". Got nearly a 100,000 dollar raise out of it too. Did I mention it's always good to carefully document your projects?
When the higher-ups start complaining about things not working, say things like:
"Yes, I knew that would happen if we substituted the windows licenses I requested for the less costly versions we were supplied. There is a reason for the price point difference. I would have pointed it out if I'd been informed of the change."
"That hardware was known to be under-preforming, however, we were not advised our requested hardware was to be substituted for that or I would have pointed out the deficiencies."
"I wouldn't dream of selecting what educational materials were purchased because I'm not an educator. I'm not sure why people that are not IT professionals would substitute their judgement in IT areas with out a even a consult with IT. We know about budget constraints and we specify the least expensive choice that still gets the job done with the resources available." (Careful with that one.)
You should come up with at least a dozen variations on this theme and drop them causally to everyone, not just the PHBs. I was able to force out a PHB that constantly was changing my orders for software, services and equipment with careful documentation and a grass roots effort from classroom teachers.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
You might consider exploring a campus agreement--some variants allow the sale of software at a super-steep discount (in recent years including OS) to students for use on their machines, so this might get you to a place where the machines could be manageable Pro or higher editions without major expense... Compliance would still be hard, but really we're at a point where you shouldn't be having "client" systems connect directly to the internal network, and should instead carefully manage their traffic and communicate content to students from the school on semi-private networks that don't have access to the live network. It isn't very difficult to conceive of configuring a VPN service onto that network in such a fashion as the clients couldn't communicate with the other clients, and only have access to the terminal servers you provide application services from...
If students want access they need to login... Android, iPhone, and iPad all support VPN connections so it seems like a trivial inconvenience to protect all involved.
It would also give you access to some very cheap pricing for the software you're probably already over-paying for.
Who did what now?
@Joe_Dragon's suggestion re: informing the higher ups of Microsoft's licensing terms is good.
If they ignore the advice, and El Fantasmo drops a dime on the district, he'll still need to anticipate looking for another job. Unless the written licensing memo makes it all the way up the chain, including the district superintendent and board (if any), there's probably going to be someone with firing authority to scapegoat IT if the resulting BSA audit ends up costing the district any money.
I'm not surprised that the office responsible for the PO is getting you the lowest end crap they can find, it's a pre-Dilbert cliche.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I agree with the parent poster, your ideal option is to leave.
That probably isn't your easiest option, naturally. You do have the option of making the best of your current job, while looking for other opportunities. If you're in a low performing district, I'd imagine you can get away with pushing the crap you get on down the supply chain, and playing the part of the BOFH when the users start bitching. Making sure to keep a solid email and written memo trail to CYA is excellent advice.
Keep in mind that a low performing district is symptomatic of a poorly run organization. Wealth != superior IQ, and despite the challenges outside of school, the kids are capable of being taught, if the organization is willing to focus on it. Unfortunately, humans are susceptible to subconsciously writing off kids they assume are stupid. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make the overall situation better. This leads directly to improvements in your situation.
This involves the kind of grunt work our current President got a taste of when he first moved to Chicago, and can be a real PITA. Plug into the PTAs, the district board, talk to the teachers, etc. Get to know more about what makes your district tick, and then offer to be part of the solution. In a positive way, scratch other people's backs, and eventually you'll be able to suggest how they can help you.
Consider that the core product your district is trying to deliver to students is sufficient mastery of the 3 Rs to be productive adults, and for a lucky few, a chance to not spin, crash, and burn during their first year in college. You may find that most teachers and staff consider any computers outside of the office staff to be a waste of resources, and in most cases, they won't be wrong. So, it may be that your best course is to help get the computers out of the classrooms, and focus on administrative IT. That also helps you get IT out from under the "asst. superintendent of curriculum and instruction", since the business rationale for that person's oversight is removed.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Those are magic words; be thankful. I'd love to hear stupid commands replaced with that.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Let me guess, the Op has never heard of Free software, BSD, Linux, Samba, Apache or Libre Office? Oh, well, let the ignorant maroon suffer then.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Write up a few examples of stupidity that ends up wasting more money than it saves, ie cheap laptops, inkjets in every room etc. Send this to the people at the top end of handling the money along with an estimate of how much it is costing and what issues is is and will cause. Hopefully when seen in dollars and sense ( :) ) they will step in and give you the mandate to fix the issues.
Also check out this site: www.edugeek.net for experiences and advice from lots of other school techs.
Having worked in this environment if the above options don't work for you and being forced to do a substandard job annoys you, your best bet is to simply leave. Some people are simply too stupid for their own good and its not worth the stress trying and failing to fix their decisions afterwards.
You have the same three choices everyone who has ever been in your position has:
1. You can quit.
2. You can blow the whistle.
3. You can do an incompetent job as directed.
What's your pleasure?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Thanks for all the comments.
No, funds are being misappropriated yet, just poorly spent.
e.g.
Admin: Why are so many of our teacher computers 5-8 years old and so slow?
IT: Because we only have enough money to replace ~50 computers a year (out of about 1000), and you said student workstations were a priority.
Admin: OK, we'll get the grant writer on it.
A grant for ~$60,000 comes in and is spent on a grant manager, aid, new software, consumables and a 10 station lab with custom software and furniture.
OR
Admin: Why doesn't the school district have wi-fi ANYWHERE?
IT: Because when we budgeted for it, you cut our budget by 25%/$120,000 (Texas educational budget cuts) and wi-fi got the ax along with a new server, student email address security cameras..., because we HAVE to have a firewall, internet service, anti-virus, student management and reporting software (contractual payments), 3 technicians, EMERGENCY repair and service funds...
Admin: OK, that's understandable. We're going to borrow $5000 dollars for ~12 touchscreen tablets for administrators and principals and make you pay for cellular internet service for all of them until we get wi-fi. Can't we just plug in Best Buy wireless switches in a bunch of class rooms?
OR
They start buying SMARTBoards, Infocus machines and Elmos (interactive whiteboards, projectors and document cameras). They mostly become $2500 overhead projectors, and they refused to budget for replacement bulbs.
They demand the quality IT resources of MUCH wealthier schools, on a small and declining budget. The powers that be, mostly, only give to the IT budget what the state says they must.
No, we're not running active directory, yet. We've been trying for 3+ years, but admin doesn't see the value in it, despite being told it is the only way to automate or implement specific requests. They buy educational software and then ask why they have to manually add students; the software only integrates with active directory.
The IT boss refuses to specifically pitch/sell necessary upgrades to his superiors because "we don't have the money."
Do whatever you can to get a policy initiative rolling. Draft it to specify, as far as possible, the "right way" to do things. Cite regulatory compliance, best practices, etc. wherever possible to support your policies as you work through the process of drafting and adopting. Make sure that everyone involved is as "on-board" and informed as you can make them. Once you have "the policy" to refer to, you have a tremendously powerful response to the idiot in purchasing who insists on doing stupid things like buying Windows 7 Home laptops that can't be properly managed. Seriously. "The Policy" carries far more weight than the words of the lowly IT guy, even if he's the one who actually wrote it. Part of this is psychological, but just as much is the fact that it's the standard that the institution has formally adopted as the right way to do things. Doing otherwise has (or should have) very clear consequences.
The assistant superintendent refuses to run or look at reports from the help desk. One of the techs fills out a paper form each week with a basic outline of what they did, because the boss's boss wants to keep a record of what she does.
Teachers bitch and moan because we started forcing their computers to sleep and require a password to resume from stand-by after 30 minutes. "Dr. XXXX I can't do my job because I have to type in a password because I left my computer alone too long." "My students are too dumb to type in stand-by passwords, it's effecting their learning time."
Each person up the chain can tell the person below them how to spend their budget, zero out their budged, "borrow" money or just take some regardless of planning so long as it's legal. When the assistant superintendent runs out of money they poke around in our budget because we didn't blow it all in October.
We can't get district administrative support, because Wal-mart sells a brend name laptop for $399.
No mater what breaks, gets lost, stolen or neglected 95% of the time, no one pays for it unless it's IT; because the asst. super says, "just do it, we'll worry about responsibility/accountability later." We can't bill internally for anything.
In situations like this, the problem is ignorance of management to the costs and issues involved. Done properly, you can have machines that are standardised, running the correct OS, and costing less than generic individual PC/license purchases.
Rather than simply bitch about it, work towards fixing the problem. Engage Dell/HP (or put the requirements out to tender with a bunch of them) or another large OEM, and run them through the number of PCs you have, and come up with a plan to depreciate them over 3-5 yrs (get extended warranty). Dell/HP will likely be able to give you bulk discount pricing of significantly less than RRP - like 25-50% off retail. Discuss your licensing options - being an educational institution, you should be able to get the correct software licenses for less than the cost purchasing individual licenses - and because they're perpetual "per head" or "per machine" licenses, you don't need to buy new ones every time you get a new PC - you simply pay for the count in use on an annual basis, which will save you money.
I work for a company that had been doing licensing the "dumb" way before, and we ended up getting a better selection of software, proper enterprise support and annual per-head licensing for less than the cost of buying individual machines with OEM licenses. And thats with no EDU discount.
Once you've got some numbers and a plan together, pitch it to management - ideally with a couple of suits from Dell/HP/MS at a meeting for your IT requirements.
I"m guessing you're fairly young - all this coming from some fresh out of uni kid will not get much respect, but if you have suits from Dell/HP/MS on board and saying the same thing, your opinion will have a bit more validation behind it.
If management are still not on board with the idea, leave. There's no hope, and you don't want to be stuck in a dead end job with no budget and thus no exposure to proper IT tools and procedures. It will do bad things for your career. At least you'll be able to say you tried.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
You need to align what you're doing in IT, to student achievement. If what you're doing improves student achievement, then it'll be very hard to say 'no' to letting you do your job. When going around you doesn't improve student achievement, or improves it less than the way you do it, they'll realize they need to let you do your job. Public Schools are about student achievement, first and foremost.
Depending on what state you're in, Public Schools have to go out to bid on any signifigant purchase. If they're buying ones and twos of computers, they can effectively bypass you. However, if you take your budget and go out to bid, or piggy-back on another state contract to define where your equipment comes from, then you can lock-in where (and what) equipment can be purchased. If you're in a Western State, you should take advantage of WSCA (http://www.aboutwsca.org) for pricing that's about as low as you can go and is likely pennies over cost.
If you're under the cirriculum side of the house, you should get out in front of teachers and show them how to use technology. Teach them how to use their clickers to get instant feedback from students to insure they understand concepts. Teach them how to use Air-Liners and Promethean boards to provide highly effective instruction. When you impact Student Achievement with tools like that, you become an invaluable resource and they'll start coming to you for advice.
If you're floundering still, make trips to surrounding school districts, meet with their IT directors and see how they do things, see what they do that improves student achievement. Take the assistant Superintendent with you. When you see good ideas, replicate them at home; don't re-invent the wheel. Take the good ideas and make them your own.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Anonymous is correct, schools are not eligible for Microsoft licensing along with almost every other vendor on Techsoup which really makes it useless for only the smallest of qualifying 501 c 3s. http://www.techsoup.org/stock/restrictions.asp#ms
...
Organizations that are not eligible: Not all 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations are eligible for participation in the Microsoft Donation Program. Those that are not eligible should visit Microsoft Volume Licensing for Industries for more information about charity licensing; they may still be eligible for discounted software from Microsoft. The following types of organizations are ineligible for Microsoft software donations:
Governmental organizations or agencies.
Educational institutions, including K-12 schools, colleges, universities, and trade schools.
I would suggest looking for a place that sells off lease PCs that come with Win7 Pro COAs you can find PCs with 3Gig of memory for $200 USD. There are a bunch of places that specialize in selling off leases to schools only and some have lifetime warranties - lifetime meaning for as long as you own it. They just keep gutting PCs and new ones are always coming in for them.
Microsoft has a new licensing program for K12 public schools that is based on FTE. Dirt cheap. Not as cheap as free linux, but if you are more comfortable with MS, then it is a rather cheap fix. Point out that the common core standards is on the way and all of those tests are online. 4 times a year. Your 4th graders will need to be able to type! http://www.corestandards.org/ What is your student information system? What does it run on? What about a website for your school? Have you looked at purchasing refurbished computer? Some vendors will be able to sell you 1 or 2 year old desktops with a 5 year warranty. Use FOG for imaging your systems (http://www.fogproject.org/), or if you are able to get the ESS licensing based on FTE from MS, you can use their software. Technology doesn't fix education, and should never be looked upon as a quick fix. It can only assist good teachers provide a better educational environment or it can really F-things up.
If your school is a 'poor' or 'under preforming' school, it may be worth asking local business' if they are willing to donate some of their older machines. These won't be fantastic, and they probably won't come with hard drives, but may still be useful for the school. I work in academia, and mentioned at a conference that our old computer cluster had died and wasn't worth resurrecting. At which point we were offered some old second hand gear- provided we recycle it when we're done (which is standard university policy anyway).
I work for a small private school. Microsoft damn near gives their software away to non-profits and schools. If you have hardware running the wrong version of Windows, Microsoft will most likely upgrade you for free.
Go here and do a bit of research:
http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/community-tools/nonprofits/
Put together a request and send it to Microsoft. You may be surprised at the response. Microsoft's business strategies have been less than nice in the past, but I can not fault how well they treat schools and non-profits.
-ted
You handle these things by superintendent and board policies, and then use disciplinary actions against employees who violate the policy.
You do have a long battle to get around a poorly educated "educator" like your Vice Super. A high level director is the hardest person in the world to change.
I fail to see how this post addresses anything in the OP's submission. ???
Ask for a copy of the IT budget for planning purposes. Make a beautiful plan of systems replacment cycles, infrastructure needs, projected costs, etc. Make a 5-year plan for your technology. Show it to *everyone*.
Make policies & procedures. Don't add a lot of crazy ramblings or jargon, keep it plain and simple. Show that to everyone too, and hopefully someone at the top will help make it official board-approved policy. Make a nice presentation about how your policies will reduce labor costs and increase hardware life. In education, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. You also need to talk about how these changes will make things simpler for the teachers. Find model schools out there that have done great things with technology, and get copies of their policies, their student:device ratios, and their device:IT ratios. Talk with your state DOE, get on any mailing lists or Google Groups for school IT staff in your state/region. Isn't one? Start it! Just cold-call other schools and talk to their IT departments. Yes, I'm serious; most good school techs are highly collaborative.
And if you can't change policy, then you need to find a way to make this mish-mash work. Consider desktop virtualization -- whatever junk they buy becomes a terminal. And how about using the health insurance policy model? You get the terminal we buy for you, or you get a $500 bonus check every 5 years to buy your own non-supported personal device to run the virtual desktop.
Is your IT department *just* a help desk?
Having previously worked in several educational settings, I'd have to say that teachers (and more-so school admins) are often some of the most self-entitled irresponsible clients you could have in IT.
It's not necessarily that the IT dept sucks, but rather that the staff get in their mind that they want something right now and must have it - standards/rules be damned - and that they know better than any slob in the IT department.
To them, there's no reason why they can't go buy the cheapest laptop possible and then have IT get it to work on the school network (despite lacking PXE or fitting into the standard imaging scheme) with all the standard software.
Alternately, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to go out and buy a bunch of Macs in a PC environment (or PC's in a Mac environment).
There's no reason not to share out their password with the class to install software X... after all why should the class wait for IT to vet+install software that they decided yesterday is absolutely necessary.
You can't tell them they're wrong, because they're educators. They're used to telling students what's correct, so how dare some lowly IT peon tell them they're wrong.
*Disclaimer: I have worked in 3 school districts as well as various other public/private entities not related to education. The above reflects many of my experiences with teachers. Not *all* teachers are like this - more are not - and happily the newer generations of teachers seem to be less self-entitled. However, even a few rogues can certainly make an IT Dept's life miserable, and generally detracts from the quality a district receives overall due to IT being tied up fixing their crud. I don't see as much of this in non-educational settings, possibly because a rogue employee is an expense.
I work in IT for a K-12 School District as well, under much the same conditions. What we have found is that standardization is the key to getting a handle on cost. We had to sell this however, and did so through the use of an analysis of the cost of standardization versus the cost of non-standardization. To do this, you must be able to explain the total cost of ownership over the lifespan of the computer. Often times what seems like a great bargain ends up costing far more in the end, because people take the internal cost for maintenance for granted and don't include it in the overall cost of the computing resource.
Total Cost of Ownership
A 2008 study by the Gartner Group determined that a $1,200 dollar PC could have a 4-year TCO as high as $5,867 per year. However properly locking down and managing the computer could cut that by as much as 42% or $3,413.
Rick Kaestner of the Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) has a wonderful presentation about TCO as well as a great tool to help determine what your TCO is. I would suggest running several current case scenarios and a best case scenario for comparison.
While cookie cutters work in the school lunch room, it has been my experience that many school districts fail to draw a distinction between the needs of instructional and business portions of operations. There is really no "one size fits all" solutions. The single platform approach tends to fail in the face of specialized requirements so it is important from a cost-effectiveness standpoint to analyze these areas and group their requirements accordingly, then focus standardized environments that meet the needs of these groups.
The Importance of Partnerships
Districts are also somewhat myopic in how they construct purchasing agreements, often confusing the terms price and value. Inexpensive doesn't always mean valuable. As an example, one district I worked for determined that it wanted to lower the initial aquisition costs, and to that end produced and evaluated an RFP containing evaluation criteria focused primarily on initial cost. After awarding the contract and receiving the first batch of computers, the district became rapidly aware that they had an issue when 50% or more of the machines were dead-on-arrival, requiring additional time and expense to return. This affected the value over time portion of the TCO of this equipment and after much consernation, the district was forced at additional cost to rebid the equipment, modify the evaluation criteria and waste implementation time overturning the original decision.
The lack of insight with initial aquisition costs led the district in the long run to changes its way of thinking and to embrace longer-term contracts, but even more importantly it became aware of the advantages of long term partnerships. Long term partnerships bring some intangible items into the equation such as the availability of higher end resources such as access to engineers, as well as assistance with integration and other things that are important to business. On the instructional side, many of the larger computer companies maintain divisions who specialize in working with K-12 environments. The bottom line is that it is important to get a handle on the big picture and to make as many people as possible aware of the current picture and give them of a vision of how things could improve. School districts tend to pay attention when someone says "I can save us money, get better service and have data to prove it."
( Late - I know) .. like committing $$ from next-year's budget to pay part of a bigger project.
I have a lot of experience working in the local government / edu systems ( not K-12, though)
I get that you can make all the plans you like, but tomorrow the boss's boss can steal 99% of your budget, your people, even your offices.
All I try to do is get written - or spoken plans out in the open as soon as practical; even creative or what-if ideas
That way, when evaluation time / raise / bonus / layoff / scapegoat or what not rolls around.. you at least have something to fall back to. ... [possibly - 'again, as we discussed when it happened']
" We planned xxx... then we lost resources ( time, money, people).. and I did the best I could to work around it by
Also, I was trying to pass along some advice it took 10 years to sink in for me... the job stinks. Most jobs working for any gov't agency do. Anyone who has really "worked" at one will tell you that. ... I'd still be at a lousy job, but at roughly 2.5 X the pay.
But, after a while we humans can get used to living near a smelly swamp or noisy airport.. if we let the silly bureaucratic process/ people drown back into the other background noises.. then it isn't so stressful for folks like us - who still want to do things the "right way".
If I could have gotten that Idea 10 years ago
First, create a nice, succinct list of issues and consequences that will take you ~5 min to read off. Prepare it so that it's as simple and as concentrated as possible. You have legitimate concerns that NEED to be expressed.
Then, assert your concerns to your director. If he doesn't listen, assert your concerns to his boss. If she doesn't listen, assert your concerns to the superintendent. If he doesn't listen, assert your concerns to the school board.
You have every right to tell the asst sup that she needs to delete emails. If she chooses to order you around like some slave, tell her very plainly that IT policy has limits of 5 Gb, and that's the limit because Joe Taxpayer pays your district so that everyone can use the tech resources provided, not just one email hog. The school parking lot is fairly segmented so that everyone has a place to park. Each student has the same size locker so that everyone has an equal storage space. She's not exempt from school board policy, and she's not exempt from IT policy.
And you have every right to tell everyone who has ears that, if the IT department does not have the right to manage IT, then IT will slowly fail, which will contribute to unreliable technology in the district, which will disrupt the learning environment, lower the moral of the students and staff, which contributes to declining enrollment. Declining enrollment is dollars walking out the door.
But seriously, assert yourself. And if nobody chooses to listen, find another school or position.
You need a Grant to get done what you want to get done when there's no more buget in the catagorical funds.
I think http://www.liveport.com/ is the right solution for OP
Casteism