Ask Slashdot: Best Practices For Maintaining IT Policy In K-12 Public Education? 208
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?"
If all else failes, try the obvious. (Score:1, Insightful)
I know this sounds like a stock answer, but you will get much more bang for your buck with Linux.
Re:Use fear. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, literally, "Fear will keep the local systems in line"
I fear for when your IT department becomes fully operational.
You don't. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Use fear. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
You didn't "listen" to TFA - you would still have to make it work. Generally the laptops would work with a bit more memory, as I have a real bottleneck now with my work PCs having less memory than optimal. As time marches on Operating System and Software require more resources and the real killer is paging memory. A bit of push-back may be required - have IT issue (with support from upper management, no mean feat) a minimum plaftorm for purchases. When technology decisions bypass IT and then IT is saddled with maintaining it, it sets the stage for Failure. Ultimately the IT department has to make its wishes known and have full support or the battle will always be a losing one.
Mission of your deparment is??? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:You don't. (Score:5, Insightful)
I second the "Leave" recommendation. You aren't going to change minds. You can dig in your heals and tell them "No, this will not work", and they may listen to you...but just as likely they'll find someone who they can bully around. More likely really.
Time to jump ship and let them fail on their own.
You are asking the wrong crowd (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:You don't. (Score:5, Insightful)
Also concur. Get out before they drag you down with them, and ruin your chances for another gig.
Re:You don't. (Score:4, Insightful)
First things first. You need to recognize that you don't have a technology problem. You have a people problem. Then you need to articulate this (tactfully, of course) as far and as wide as possible.
If you succeed at that, follow up on the other excellent technical ideas expressed here.
Re:Do you have a service-quality issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
He did say he was in an "economically shaky, low-performing school district". An organization being characterized poorly like that usually means that the people running it at the top are doing a lousy job, and when that's the case, there's not much people at lower levels can do, and it also means those people at the lower levels probably aren't to blame.
Quit (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
15 years in K-12 IT with a multimillion budget (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [slashdot.org] - 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.
Re:Use fear. (Score:1, Insightful)
It sounds like he's working in a district infested with Republicans (at least as far as local school board and county/state representation are concerned).
I've worked in 3 different school districts. Most of them started out with the basics. Get a few hard-core "why are my taxes so high" republicans onto a school board or county tax board, and the next thing you know, your educational budget is FUCKED.
They can't fire teachers, because that gets noticed - go from 25 to 35 students per class and the parents see it.
They won't ever fire principals or superintentents, that gets noticed and they have tenure.
So who gets fucked? Well they look in the obvious places.
#1 - running your own cafeteria and actually providing healthy meals? Well we can get a kickback if we switch to some crapass "food substittute" provider like Aramark or Chartwells and let them festoon the buildings with coke machines and snack vending machines.
#2 - Janitorial staff? Feh. We'll just make the teachers do it.
#3 - IT budget. This is where the "but I have a nephew who knows O SO MUCH about technology and he says this laptop is fine" bullshit comes into play. You're trying to set up a secure network and a domain that will prevent unauthorized access and other problems, all Mr. Dumbshit Creationist Republican knows is "compooter cost munny."
End result? Exactly the shit he is seeing.
Re:If all else failes, try the obvious. (Score:2, Insightful)
What problem would switching platforms solve? They'd have to select/learn a whole lot of different software, they'd have to cobble together some way of centrally managing several hundred computers AND a thousand or two user accounts without any real vendor tools to speak of.
Typically people who spout 'linux' as the answer for problems in educational computing tend to think that shooks use little more than an office suite & a browser... That is rarely the case - typically textbooks have supporting software, there are various assessment tools, special-purpose tools for managing HVAC, the library, student records, etc.
Turning the entire infrastructure of a school upside-down to switch platforms is more of a problem than a solution.
The OP didn't complain about technology (apple, PC) but about respect and trust issues. His teachers would never think twice about picking hardware for his environment, but they'd never let him pick their text books.
Re:Several solutions (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. I work in a district much like GP. What you describe is probably how the last guy got this one into this mess.
a) "Open Source" is not a magic fix-it. If OP/GP is a windows/PC tech, he has a sharp learning curve ahead and he already has no time. If he makes a switch and can't make it work, he's on the street. Even if he can make it work, training the users will be nearly impossible. Sure, a browser is a browser, but K-12 is a strange industry where uncooperative employees tend to survive to weigh down the process for years. "You can't expect me to use this thing without training!" "You can't expect me to show up to training seminars without extra pay!" "I can't do my job because you gave me a computer that I can't use!" "Test scores are down because I spent all my time trying to use your system!"
b) $1500? This guy is bidding against the donated 5yr old crap and "Black Friday" new pricing. They're going around him because he (or the last guy) was taking your advice. YES, $1500 is a good budget number for a midrange computer and monitor, standard MS software, and related infrastructure. He won't get that. You can play that game in your research environment only because everyone does....
c) The reason you need MS Office is not for the Principals... The teachers will want an office suite on their computers that matches the instructional materials they can buy to aid their instruction. Yes, they should teach it differently, but they don't and this guy is a decade away from having the street cred to tell them how and still keep his job.
d) Your best advice. If he can get them to come to him, get at least two vendors to fight for the business. Don't go the sealed bid route. Tell each about the other bid. Rinse and repeat.
e) He has no budget. If he has a discretionary budget, infrastructure is the way to be. No you don't need cisco- I am personally a fan of HP switches...
My advice: Setup a meeting with the Superintendent(s) and the business administrator. Share your reasonably priced vision of what their district could be in 3-4 years with consistent, managed investment. (Include their pet projects - grit your teeth and do it!) Tell them what it costs both in terms of dollars and procedural changes. Do this every 6 months or so regardless of the result.
Regardless of the result:
1: Core infrastructure first. Those switches. 2 Servers. Good backup for critical data (business office; stuff used by superintendents).
1a: Business critical systems must be setup and managed correctly. This is the ONLY item I would take to the school board if you can't get cooperation. This means domain, authentication, good enterprise class AV, VPN access for semitrusted systems that need access. You should insist on this in the strongest way possible.
2: Inventory and Ticket system. Knowing how many of what you are responsible for is important. Knowing how many times you've had to fix the lab of black Friday rejects is critical too.
3: People that work through you take priority. If they did it your way and bought what you wanted the way you wanted, it MUST work. MUST! If you have to sit there a switch the bits yourself...
4: That means you get to those home OS mistakes when you can. NEVER order parts for these machines. NEVER spend a lot of time servicing these machines. DO NOT be afraid to declare these systems "no longer usable without significant repair investment". When asked about that cost, quote the dollar amount of a properly spec'd new machine.
5: DO NOT leave non-functional machines deployed. Non-functional equipment makes you look bad. Insufficient quantities of equipment may lead to proper budgeting...
Finally: If you find yourself with a small budget for user endpoints (computers) and want to deploy to gain the most budgetary 'bang for your buck', consider deploying in the K-4 / K-6 segment of your district. Most districts put their best in the 9-12 space and place progressively older / less r
Re:Use fear. (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends on what you mean by "Work". In our school district, we found out the hard way, that the VLM KMS Server (microsoft DRM) doesn't work with commodity hardware, PERIOD. There is an extra setting in BIOS that is a MS Key on Enterprise level hardware that is required for the KMS to activate our Win 7 Professional/Server 2k8R2. (Office KMS works fine however).
This alone is reason enough to say "No unauthorized purchases". When you're imaging (WDS is a godsend) bulk computers, saving the district THOUSANDS in labor by having everything "enterprise" level and supporting 5000+ computers with a staff of 9, it all makes sense.
As for the Original question, I have learned a phrase that keeps people at bay, "Can I have a budget code for that", whenever they ask me if something is possible. In IT, almost anything is possible, given the right budget. The idea that you can run everything on a shoestring should be put to rest that easy.
The other phrase I've learned is, "If you won't support IT, why should IT support you". The meaning is simple, if you go around IT, then you don't get IT support, or you are last in line when it comes to solving the issues of the day. "Your Acer isn't running Pro? Sorry, I have computers that are part of the domain that need support, they are my priority"
Lastly, one has to communicate WHY (often in overly simplistic terms) the IT has its rules. It isn't to be dicks (okay, sometimes it is) but rather because there are consequences for not doing things right in the first place. Mostly those consequences cost more in the long run than doing things right in the first place. Lost data, slow support, expending resources to put out fires that didnt't need to happen in the first place. ALL trying to save a buck.
And I feel for the guy. I know what it means when the Administration is too stupid to know how dumb they really are. These people know nothing, are making decisions in complete and utter arrogance of ignorance. And I have the stories to prove it.