How much Technical Support do you need?

Many Charter School administrators have a background in traditional education and in the management practices found there. That can be both good and not so good. One area which doesn’t usually translate well is the size and complexity of technology, which often gets overbuilt.

Now it’s fine to overbuild the infrastructure if money is no object; and there is a certain level of infrastructure that needs to exist for current and future services. But we either see huge investment in infrastructure, followed by a wholly inadequate plan for managing it; or we see technology infrastructure as an afterthought.

If you are considering this subject in advance of build out, do your school a huge favor and enlist some professional help in the area of capacity planning. Many things affect the required capacity: student count, student demographics, campus layout, teaching methods, core curriculum, and business management practices. Doing the planning up front can not only simplify construction, but save tremendous amounts of money.

If you are an operating Charter School, the damage (so to speak) has already been done, but there are a number of things you can do to manage infrastructure more effeciently. But how much technical support do you really need? What drives the requirements for technical support services and what can you do to reduce costs?

Our well established model is to provide weekly scheduled technical support complimented by less frequent, but routine technology management. Our baseline is to provide 6 hours of support one day each week for a typical freestanding Charter School. You might find the following complexity calculator useful. This is not an exact science, just 10 years of experience and nearly all of it on the “too lean” side of support resources, but it will get you in the ballpark.

For our calculations, answer the following questions and add one points for each of the following:

•  Physical Servers  
• One point for each server in your organization
• Software Systems  
• One point for each server based Application (SQL, Exchange, Sharepoint, etc.)
• Desktop/Laptops  
• One point for each 10 desktop and laptop computers
• Network Topology  
• One point for each network type (Wired, Wireless)
• Number of VLANS  
• One point for each VLan or Virtual Network segment
• Physical Facilities  
• One point for each campus buildings connected to the network
• Social Media   
• One point if you have a formal social media campaign
• Virtualization  
• One point if you have cloud based resources or virtual computers
• VOIP On Premise   
• One point if you have an on premise VOIP phone system
• Websites   
• One Point for each actively managed websites

Now tally up your answers and apply them to the table shown below:

Management Models and accompanying Technical Support Requirements  

• FTE    
• Full Time Equivalent Technical Support Staff*    50   >50
• Complex   
• Weekly Management & Daily Onsite Support    25   50
• Median   
• Monthly Management & Weekly Support          10   25
• Simple   
• Quarterly Management & Bi-Weekly Support  >10   10

*Outsourced support technicians would likely cost more than a full time staff member at this level.

Focus less on the specific numbers and more on the concept of applying the right combination of both management level and support level technical assistance. An organization universally needs a management component to guide the acquisition, implementation, and management of projects. It  also needs periodic technical support. The amounts of both depend upon the roles and capabilities of internal staff. Accordingly, the range of support varies from a simple model, to a full time equivalent model, depending upon factors listed above.

While some Charter Schools start with a full-time technician on staff, this tends to be very short-lived for a simple reason. Prevailing wages for experienced information workers generally exceed wages for school principals and administrators. This is not sustainable and the result is constant turnover, which does not lend itself to reliable infrastructure.

Applying the right combination of management and support resources can have far reaching impact on your school, but it is a challenge to balance. And there are factors outside of your control that can completely undo a well-chosen team. Too many resources and the budget won’t sustain it, too little and everyone suffers from system outages, disruptions in the classroom, and frustrations in the front office.

Evaluate your circumstances, map out a rational IT support model, and then get your team to work. Having functional information technology without breaking the bank is possible, indeed it is the natural result of good planning and execution.