I have to be a little careful here as it describes some sensitive political/civic areas for me. Pardon the ellipticism…
So, small town. Very tight budget. Large divide between the “town” and the schools, which get about 3/4 of the total budget. Much duplication of services and departments.
The schools have an excellent IT department - small, three full time and very competent and dedicated employees - which now answers directly to the Superintendent. (The town side… well, let’s just not peek into that mess.)
Under all the Common Core and accreditation panic, the schools have been found at something of a deficit on the “technology in the classroom” checkboxes. There is an ongoing, but resolving, issue with inappropriate tech being forced on teachers (I am a part of the board that is reviewing and making recommendations on this basis).
Amidst something of a top-level shuffle, the new Superintendent has decided to put the IT department under the Director of Curriculum, answering to him and then to the Supe and then to the BOE. The reasons for this are murky (as yet) but seem to boil down to a perception that the IT department is “into tech for tech’s sake” and needs to be brought to heel and forced to focus on the deficits in Classroom Tech/Educational Tech.
Somehow, making them subject to a person who has no particular tech background and is something of a technophobe and has no understanding of the larger role of IT in an organization - somehow, that will fix all the ET/CT issues without costing any money. (OTOH, hiring an ET specialist to focus specifically on classroom tech and work with the teaching staff, IT and administration would cost money, which is BAD.) Hence this proposed solution.
The IT department already answered to someone with no tech background (the supe), so I’m not sure what this is going to accomplish, unless they think the DoC is going to simply have more time to review the IT budget than the superintendent has had.
In my experience of being moved from boss X with no tech background to boss Y with no tech background, everything we felt we needed was just rubber-stamped anyway.
Who is forcing inappropriate tech on the teachers? If it is the Director of Curriculum, explaining why it is inappropriate from within the organization might be better. In any case, if IT is going to be yelled at for this, it should be able to deflect the criticism up a level as opposed to crossing org lines.
And I agree that IT can’t expect to report to someone with a clue within a school system.
They’re looking at it wrong. IT is fundamentally a support role. What they’re describing with the tech in the classrooms is a fundamentally line role, in that it’s an educational component, not an IT component.
In other words, the education folks need to get their shit together and identify where, what and how they want to deploy that stuff, and then engage the IT guys to actually do it.
It’s absolutely not the IT department’s role to do that- at best, they might have a business analyst who translates teacher and administrator-speak into IT, and writes up requirements.
Thanks for the comments. I am most in agreement with Bump, and that’s the consensus among those of us who are concerned about this move.
IT is an integral part of most organizations, and much of what it does is fundamental support of the business and purpose. To shove it under a component - be it Curriculum or Sales or Manufacturing or Customer Service - is to cripple its ability to do what needs to be one in that fundamental, org-wide role. The lower-level boss is going to see it as primarily supporting their niche, and everything for other departments and the “whole” is going to get filtered, limited and crippled.
This is especially so in the case I am looking at. The idea that classroom tech deficits - which have MANY reasons, mostly years of stupid decisions that my advisory board is working to overcome - can be fixed by chaining IT as a whole to that department and task foretells not only the kind of crippling I mention, but establishes the reasoning as being faulty, misguided and component-centric in the worst way.
This week will be battling the decision on several fronts, and I’ve already found that the BOE and other key players think those of us objecting are mad as hatters and just “protecting IT’s turf.” O Joy.
You are correct. The problem is (in my experience in K12 and Higher Ed) when IT is on its own it is under no obligation to ‘deploy that stuff’ or purchase it at all. I have seen too many K12 districts and universities where IT is making decisions it should not be. I’m not saying that is the case here, but it is the reason these organizational changes are being made everywhere. IT existing as its own separate component is a thing of the past.
I’m sort of with bump on this. Except I think they absolutely do need someone to bridge the gap and help identify business requirements. You tell me your goals, and I can identify what pieces of hardware/software get you there at various cost points. The more info you can give me, the better I can narrow the results for you.
If left to my own devices, I’m simply going to use best practices, which is going to be more expensive. Not for it’s own sake, but because I’m going to want to get devices and software that are going to have at least 3 years of future proofing, support and expandability. I used to say 5 years, but now 3 years seems more realistic.
Having said that, you also have to balance redundancy versus service level desired. Sure you can reduce the number of support staff by consolidating, however, you lose the “personal touch” / continuity of knowledge of legacy systems or individual sites. That may not seem important, but people do expect pretty much instant support from IT, and in a modern classroom if the WLAN and/or server goes down it can have a significant impact on class teaching / service delivery. The ETR can go up a lot if someone has to come in cold with no site specific knowledge and start trying to address the issue(s).
It’s (generally speaking) a better practice to have IT be it’s own division with accountability to a CIO but localized resourcing of personnel. This is for two reasons. 1) You can have a larger division wide IT plan with measurable goals and standardization of hardware/software and 2) You get management separation from individual personalities within other divisions or at specific sites.
In other words, if the new principal at one school decides they like apple products, they can’t force that decision in their school. The school system has to make a choice which they favor and everyone adapts to that. If the WLAN at a school goes down, you have local helpdesk which can be on site very quickly, and you still have higher tier support available within the district if the problem is more significant (think a network engineer or server engineer), all of whom are familiar with the systems in toto, and some of whom are extremely familiar with any individual site (and know that Mrs. Gronkowski has once again unplugged the “blinky box thingy” so she could plug in her overhead projector (am I dating myself? ).
The problem is an ongoing battle over curriculum support, poor choices for classroom tech at the school level and an IT department that’s stretched very thinly.
It made more sense to someone to hand control of the whole IT department to the Curriculum department than to find money to hire a true ET/CT specialist to bridge the gap, which involves both keeping teachers/donors/grant seekers from buying inappropriate, high-maintenance, closed-source tech and to get IT to respond to classroom-level tech requests and rollout. There’s no real villain in the mix except a perennially tight budget… but this decision is one of those forthcoming train wrecks that everyone is brushing aside because it’s such a Good Solution for the immediate problems.
It’s shaping up as a hell of a fight, and I ended up in the hot seat without really being a player in the game to start with. My committee wasn’t important enough to ask about the choice in the first place, but now it’s seemingly essential to get our rubberstamp on the deal, and as quietly as possible. O Joy.
The role of modern IT is changing, though. Nowadays, there is some expectation that IT staff, especially senior IT staff, have some basic understanding of business goals, objectives, and processes. More and more, IT is being called upon to advise on how to advance those business objectives both from a business perspective and a technology perspective. Whether or not it’s prudent to ask a techie’s advice on business processes, it does seem to be happening more and more.
That said, it does sound like there is a lack of direction and focus regarding the use of technology in the OP’s school system. It doesn’t sound like folks really understand what they are trying to achieve, and no amount of seat-shuffling is going to solve this. However, given the financial constraints, I think a case can be made for moving one of the three IT folks over, at least temporarily, to the Curriculum department. And then making that person’s job more curriculum-focused compared to the other two IT support folks. But only if the school leadership can get on the same page as to what “technology in the classroom” really means to them.
My argument so far has been that while Curriculum may need more direct IT contact and support, giving them control over a department with organization-wide responsibilities is only going to lead to trouble. Things like fixing network-wide backup problems will get pushed aside because everyone knows the imperative is to get the 6th grade SmartBoards working. I suggest there are better ways to give Curriculum some dedicated IT support and focus, starting with hiring that specialist even if it means the grass gets mowed less.
Most of the people involved are smart, able and familiar with the situation. This decision came from a… questionable corner and was rubber-stamped by everyone else. There is also the stink of “nothing matters but what’s in the classroom” - which as a parent with kids in the school, I can’t argue, but the bus needs wheels and an engine as well as comfy seats.
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