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."

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[Anonymous Coward]

For a few weeks... If they need a systems administrator, they should realize it pretty quickly.

Based on my experience

[kestasjk]

If my high school sys admin was a benchmark for success you should try to get in the way of education as much as possible. If someone is programming in Brainfuck go ahead and remove the scripts and lock their account for a week even though you only saw the naughty word because you were searching for it.

The moment anyone does something that violates the terms of use (even something completely petty that doesn't affect anyone) find out which class and person is doing it, sprint to the class, sneak in quietly (wearing camouflage gear), tip-toe behind the person offending the petty rule, and scream in their ear while they're doing whatever it is they shouldn't.
Bonus points if you put your hand on their shoulder, and they turn around and see you glaring into their eyes with disgust just as you start to scream at them.

If you can demonstrate these skills to the board you're in; technical abilities don't matter in my experience.