Tech support: whether using inside or outside help, districts need to gauge total cost of ownership - school technology - Statistical Data Included

School Administrator, June, 2002 by Kate Beem

In the old days--maybe a decade ago--worries about technology support were few for most school districts.

The drill was virtually the same from coast to coast: Use some capital outlay to buy a few Apple computers for classrooms, maybe enough to set up labs in secondary schools. The task of keeping the machines running fell to a staff member, usually a tech-savvy teacher with enough knowledge and interest to take on the job for a little extra pay and the chance for some on-the-job training.

Then came the Internet and networked computers, laptops, handhelds, thin clients, wireless computing, local- and wide-area networks, cable television access, voice mail and electronic mail and the E-rate. Suddenly, school districts that wanted to stay on the cutting edge found themselves scrambling to keep the technology they owned operating and functional; purchase the newest gadgets, software and machines; and train educators to use them in the classroom. And districts still using the part-time technology support staff they cobbled together in the 1980s and 1990s found themselves falling further and further behind.

Nightmarish Needs

Just ask Ken Arndt. The 17,500-student district he leads in Chicago's northwest suburbs is struggling to handle the technology boom.

The Community United School District 300 in Carpentersville, Ill., swells by 500 to 700 students a year, which means its technology needs grow, too. The sprawling district encompasses eight villages and crosses the territories of several local telephone companies. Technology companies in the vicinity steadily drain the district of its computer technicians, offering salaries a public school district can't compete with. And the faculty members who have overseen the district's technology support program on the side are nearing retirement.

Mix all those ingredients together, Arndt says, and it's a management nightmare.

"This has grown far beyond what a part-time employee can keep up with," he says.

Perhaps Arndt can find solace in the fact that he's not alone among school system leaders today.

Like the rest of society, education has embraced technology, from floating bond issues to pay for new equipment and training to applying for the E-rate, a federal program that offers $2.25 billion yearly in discounted telecommunications services to schools and libraries. Now, in schools across the country, students and parents can access grades, homework assignments and schedules online. Schools offer courses over the Internet. School libraries can easily manage their collections with the help of computers. Cafeterias are cashless, charging the price of a school lunch to a student's account. And districtwide voice-mail and e-mail systems allow teachers and parents greater ease of communication.

But the prominent role computers play in education today has brought its own set of problems to districts from Connecticut to Washington, says Talbot Bielefeldt, manager of research and evaluation for the International Society for Technology in Education in Eugene, Ore. And school districts with successful professional development programs are in worse straits support-wise than those that purchase the equipment and leave it fallow, he says.

"Once access is solved, maintenance becomes an issue," Bielefeldt says. "People are beginning to depend on [computers] and when they break down, it's a very big issue. They're interrupting the school day."

Model Practices

Determining exactly what school district technology support staff need to know is the goal of TechSETS, a statewide initiative in California run jointly by the offices of education in San Diego and Imperial counties. The project uses a matrix to gauge what skills are needed to perform certain support tasks and is working to align training programs with that matrix, says Todd Finnell, director of learning technology for the Imperial County Office of Education.

As part of the objective to standardize technology support, TechSETS staff compiled profiles of the typical school computer technician, network technician and technology director to better define what practices work and what those particular jobs require.

The project also offers a system of support for the technology support staffs in the state's 1,055 school districts. Twenty people across the state are paid to respond electronically to any questions posed by district technology staff. In this way, Finnell says, the project aims to build a K-12 technology support knowledge base.

Although TechSETS' services are available to any California school district, the greatest use is coming from small- to mid-size and isolated districts, Finnell says. He foresees a technology support crisis looming in the nor-too-distant future.

"It's only going to get worse before it gets better," Finnell predicts. "There's so much money and so much equipment going into schools. And the support issue is just killing us."

Failure to address those support issues can create a vicious cycle that's hard to escape, no matter how many in-service workshops a district schedules, says Michael Sullivan, executive director of the Agency for Instructional Technology in Bloomington, Ind. When the network crashes again and again and again, teachers will be less inclined to build their lesson plans around the Internet or other technology, Sullivan says.