What we have here is a failure… of Leadership

One of my favorite lines comes from Paul Newman, in the movie Cool Hand Luke. It is similar to this weeks blog title, and most of you over 40 have probably heard it. Newman repeats the phrase, “What we have here is a failure to communicate!” He repeats it often and until his eventual demise.

I substitute the word Leadership, because communication is the single most important aspect of the Holy Grail called leadership.

This is not an article criticizing anyone in leadership at any school. Leadership is a tough business, a worthy objective, and a never ending quest. It is very hard work for most of us average folks who don’t possess the skills of (pick your favorite leader).

And I hesitate writing about leadership, because I have my own failings. But I’ll do it anyway – mostly because I can, and also because I believe there are a few key ways that leadership can be enhanced in the area of Information Technology in a Charter School.

It’s pretty simple, really. Somebody has to be in charge and everybody needs to follow. How you get there is not so simple.

We recently had an exceptionally talented teacher approach us about a new online learning system that she was excited to share with others. Fair enough, we always welcome new ideas and ways of improving things. Problem is, she wanted us to essentially pressure the other staff members into seeing the world in her particular view. Of course we could have pushed her agenda and made it difficult to use other similar services had we been so inclined, but that would be a conflict of interest and contrary to sound and ethical leadership.

Do you have similar challenges in your organization? We frequently see these shooting stars of good ideas hurling across the proverbial campus sky, only to flash one last time and crash to the earthy reality of resistance to change and failure to get people on board. Change is hard and change requires leadership.

Again, this is not about criticism, but better ways of doing things.

May I suggest a very old fashioned approach to this very common problem? We have observed positive results at schools that have implemented these ideas.

It starts with a committee, okay if the label of a committee is a turn-off, try “focus group” or “change engineers” or whatever you like. But assemble a group of enthusiastic individuals - preferably volunteers who enjoy technology – to meet as a Technology Advisory Committee. Include one or more individuals from the following stakeholder groups – students, teachers, parents, administrators/BOD, and IT.

Establish a set time to meet and give it a high priority, perhaps even throw in some perks for participation.  Don’t waste time or meet without an agenda, be organized and serious. Then begin the process of listening to ideas, problems, suggestions, and challenges and collectively formulate a game plan that is agreed upon by the group. Don’t rush things. If more information is required, delay a decision rather than rushing forward for the sake of decisiveness.

When ideas are vetted in a fair and open manner, the best ideas will ultimately bubble to the top. A wise leader can encourage this process by maintaining order, giving all stakeholders a fair voice, and ensuring the dialogue does not become personal or vindictive.

You should observe three important principals in these interactions:

1. Most good ideas come from the troops – teachers and students are where the rubber meets the road. They often have great ideas that bubble up because they are the primary consumers of IT.
2. Wisdom and perspective comes from experience –administrators will guide the conversations to avoid the pitfalls of policy limits, government mandates,  and budget realities.
3. Practical aspects of implementing are best addressed by your IT managers – building upon existing infrastructure is often a necessary compromise with new ideas.

Individual efforts, by any one group alone will never win the day. There has to be an agreed upon direction, with buy-in from all the stakeholders after vigorous debate, and a practical implementation plan put together that doesn’t completely undo the infrastructure already established.

Is your school missing the proverbial forest for all of the trees when it comes to Information Technology? Do you apply the same seriousness to deploying IT assets as you do financial assets?
Or is the culture at your school focused on position, power plays, and pet projects? 

By implementing regular Technology Advisory Committee meetings you are more likely to have a single, rational, and agreed upon process to determine what is best for the school.

Summary

It is possible to provide concise leadership in the area of technology. In our view it starts at the top by establishing a Technology Committee, with representatives from each stakeholder group. The committee meets regularly and deliberately to evaluate the desires and needs of the students through the advocacy of teachers, tempered with the wisdom and experience of the administrators, and guided by IT.
 
Bonus: A suggested methodology for your periodic TAC meetings:

1. Start Positive: Begin on a positive note.  Report on a new implementation or project that highlights success in your efforts.
2. Train Constantly: Have a 5 minute training session about something really useful that needs wider adoption. It may be the very issue you report on in the first item.
3. Encourage Participation: Have each stakeholder representative review one or two high level technical challenges or ongoing problems. Avoid getting too deep into the details.
4. Find Consensus: Informally poll your group to discover which challenges are your most pressing issues, then discuss it in more detail.
5. Propose Solutions: Encourage each stakeholder to propose a course of action associated with your top issue(s) without interruption.
6. Debate Proposals: Open the proposal up to vigorous, but moderated debate. Explore alternatives, question every aspect of the proposal, review cost/benefits, and consider implementation challenges.
7. Assign Action: Develop an implementation plan or resolution plan for the issue. Complex issues may take multiple meetings to solidify, but act to the extent possible.
8. Require Reports: Make assignments and reports on those assignments the subject of your next meeting – agenda item 1.
9. Repeat as needed: You might need weekly TAC meetings at first. Eventually you should be able to meet just once each month.

To outsource or not to outsource… that is the question

We recently learned that one of our partner schools is proposing to hire full time staff for their IT, finance, maintenance, and other services, which had previously been contracted out. Okay, at first glance this seems like a legitimate management decision, but is it?

While I cannot speak to other types of services, we experienced this exact scenario once before with respect to IT services at a K-6 charter school and it was disastrous.

Several years ago in Texas, a Vice-Principal was hired at one of our partner schools. He quickly determined that his expertise was sufficient to supplant ours and within a few months found a way to eliminate our contract to provide IT support on one day each week. This was a school that we had built from the ground up and was operating with a high degree of efficiency.

I will spare you the details, but by the following year the Vice-Principal was fired, the school was in financial distress (which led to the dismissal of the business manager), and the technology had pretty much been re-outsourced to the Regional Service Center (the state). And the terminated Vice Principal had so maligned our service model in the process of making the case for our contract termination, that we were not considered in rebuilding the infrastructure.

The whole process diminished efficiency, caused significant service disruptions, cost significant sums of money, and accomplished nothing of value.

So are there times when it is a good idea to hire a full time IT administrator for your school? Maybe, but in the dozen years or so we have been doing this we have found very few. For starters, the numbers (as in cost) just don’t add up. Furthermore, the administrative oversight of personnel is not significantly better. And the level of expertise is greatly diminished.

Restated, these are three reasons why outsourcing IT is normally a better idea than hiring full-time: Cost, Control, and Expertise.

Cost

According to a January 2011 survey by PayScale, the average high school principal in the United States earned a total salary package between $68,167 and $101,560. The Bureau of Labor Statistics validates those numbers, finding that administrators at elementary and high school receive an average annual salary of $85,220.

On the other hand, a similar study by the BLS for computer administrators employed in the highest-paying industries, computer equipment manufacturing and securities exchanges, salaries averaged $89,840 and $89,340, respectively. The number was less in the academic world, but not by a large margin. Granted there is a wide range of qualifications for Information Workers, but even non-degreed, yet certified Network Engineers earned up to $56,000 on average.

When competent Information Workers can earn nearly as much as School Administrators, it is difficult to understand the justification to hire a full-time Technology Director at most Charter Schools. This is particularly true when very few schools need full-time IT administrators. They rarely even need full-time technical support.

Our standard management model provides 1 day per week of onsite Network Administration, supplemented by the daily support required for the particulars of a school, either by a less qualified support engineer or a faculty member assigned to technology. The best scenario is having a faculty member assigned to support technology and serve as the point person in IT matters.

Let’s do the math, assuming a 50 week annual contract. A network engineer charging $65.00/hr. at 8 hours per week would cost $26,000. A desktop support technician charging $15.00/hr. for 20 hours per week would cost $15,000.  The total cost is $41,000. And this provides the full range of technical services required for most freestanding Charter Schools.

This is about half of the cost of hiring one competent Computer Administrator. I emphasize competent, because like in the experience described above, hiring to the level of your budget may in fact cause you to hire an incompetent Computer Administrator. The unintended costs of doing so can be enormous.

Control

Not long ago we had to let one of our desktop support engineers go. We were informed that he was not a good fit for one of our schools and our coaching him on his work ethic was not going well.  We reluctantly terminated this employee, only to find that the school had decided to rehire him as their employee instead of ours.

The situation went from bad to worse. Now, not only did we have the same HR problem as before, but now we had less supervisory oversight.

You will in all probability always need to have entry level desktop administration support. This is where competent Computer Administrators get started. Managing desktops, while getting training on network administration and specific line of business applications is the common pathway for information workers. And there is always an abundance of desktop administration to be done in a school.

But having administrative control of information workers is a tricky business. It is crucial that those so employed are extremely trustworthy and able to work well with others. After all, they control all of the access to information resources in the school and can without much difficulty view sensitive documents and even your email communication in many cases.

Having an outside entity manage your Information Systems can provide an important element of integrity into your infrastructure.

Expertise

You don’t hire a doctor full time to evaluate a medical condition and treat it. Nor do you typically hire a CPA full time to do your bookkeeping. And most schools only retain legal counsel for specific compliance or legal matters where specialized knowledge is required.

There are reasons, both economic and practical why outsourcing Information Technology is wise. Obtaining the requisite technical expertise is the most important reason. Some technical expertise is only required once, as in the design of your network or major system implementations. Other technical specialization may be required only intermittently when upgrading servers or network infrastructure. And much technical expertise is only required infrequently, such as network administration.

So why would you hire full-time to the highest level of expertise for those rare occasions when needed if the bulk of your technical support requirements exist at the entry level? This is a classic misallocation of resources.

Summary

At the risk of self-serving, it seems that outsourcing Technology Management is a pretty common sense approach. It costs less, provides more control, and delivers a higher level of expertise. And these are all good things.

But alas, a wise individual once told me “Common sense is not so common”. 

Please call if you would like to discuss the right mix of Information Management and Technical Support resources.

How To Completely Undo Your IT Management

Truly this is not an article on how to dismantle the technical support mechanism at your school. It is however, a recounting of actual experiences – some of them unpleasant – that you should avoid; that is if you wish to have a better technical management support mechanism in place.

Although it is less painful to consider other’s mistakes, making them yourself has a silver lining. Your mistakes can always be used to point out a bad example, which can be instructive …. to others.

 Here are five of the most common self-defeating behaviors we have seen while managing charter schools:

1.       Paying for advice, then completely ignoring it
2.       Allowing everyone to develop their own agenda
3.       Making significant technology related expenses without involving IT
4.       Expecting short turnaround times for complex projects
5.       Assuming IT management grasps the political and leadership challenges in your school

Paying an expert for advice, then completely ignoring it

Several years ago a generous benefactor came to the religious community where we rented facilities for a small K-4 charter school. He had a terminal condition and was offering a generous gift of money to buy computers for both the school and the religious community (they had educational activities during the week).  I was asked to advise them about the best use of this generosity.

After considering the budget, the stated educational objectives, the current infrastructure, and the cost of managing the resources going forward; we proposed a solution to buy 20 laptop PC’s.   They would integrate seamlessly into the existing infrastructure at the school and add to the collection of PC’s currently used to form a full computer lab.

Unfortunately, at the same meeting, was an individual who had much greater influence with the kindly old gentleman, who was an unflinching MAC user; who, without any of the above mentioned considerations, persuaded the benefactor in the direction of using Apple Macs instead.

Please don’t misunderstand, I liked the MAC’s just fine, but given all of the other considerations it was not a good choice. Three months later I was asked to purchase software for the school/congregation to turn these perfectly good MAC’s into PC’s so they could be used with the existing systems and processes the rests of the school was using.

Presumably you have a relationship with a trusted technology consultant as part of your IT management. If that is not the case, you might consider making some changes. And when you seek advice, carefully consider completely ignoring it.

Allowing everyone to develop their own agenda

Want to stimulate creativity by engaging all levels of your staff in a brainstorming exercise of new ideas? Watch out! If you do this without a mechanism to vet those ideas, debate those ideas, and build consensus around the winning ideas you might be causing more damage than good. Trying to herd cats seems a helpful illustration of this concept, which has at its root great potential, but undirected creates chaos, division, power struggles, and politics.

We welcome creativity, the introduction of new ideas, insight into new discoveries, and the development of improved technology. We applaud all those who keep striving to do things better.

However, when those expressions of creativity become individual agendas, it can be detrimental to the organization as a whole – unless there is consensus building, implementation planning, and adequate training.

Several years ago an ambitious technology teacher determined that interactive white boards were an essential part of the classroom experience. And she was quite persuasive. The school purchased and installed the technology at great expense. The perfectly functioning whiteboards were rarely used by even the supporters of the technology and never used by those who did not want it in the first place.

When lesson plans and teaching styles have to be adapted to adopt a new technology, the failure rate rises in proportion to the change required. And without significant buy-in, a top down implementation, and significant training these kinds of projects will fail.

If you cannot manage the process of building consensus and properly implementing a project, then at least do it in a pilot program where the technology can be proved, and likely improved upon, without breaking the bank.

Making significant technology related purchases without input from IT

So common is this scenario that you only have to say these two words “Surprise, Surprise!”, and most technicians immediately know they have been handed a poorly specified, often incompatible, or otherwise problematic new piece of hardware or software to install.

“And could you have it installed yesterday?”

Not long ago we reviewed the USAC Form 471 for a small K-4 charter school that had been approved for over $25,000 of servers, switches, wireless controllers, and access points. While the expected reimbursement was exciting and gratifying, the components specified were not appropriate for the size and makeup of the schools infrastructure. It was the equivalent of putting Boeing 777 engines on a Piper Cub.

Granted, there are times when purchasing decisions cannot wait. And perfect scenarios don’t exists in every school where decisions are adequately considered and due diligence provided. And in a large view, this is a process of continual improvement.

Nevertheless, do yourself a huge favor and run technology purchasing past your IT team and avoid the headaches for both of you. There are two benefits in doing this. First, you will have a much greater chance of getting the right equipment and you may also spend less for the solution.

And this is especially germane to new construction or remodeling projects. Finding that you need a dozen new CAT6 network cables installed is exponentially more difficult after that final coat of paint has been applied.

Expecting short turnaround times for complex projects

Whenever I hear the preface of “How soon can you…” I wonder if adequate consideration has been given to a project or purchase. It’s understandable, logistics now make PC’s appear overnight and you can have an entire computer lab sitting in boxes ready for installation in a few days.

But that does not always happen. We recently placed an order for new lab equipment and were given a 10 day delivery notice. Three weeks later part one of two arrived and it was a full month before the final components were delivered.  It was embarrassing for us and understandably frustrating for the school waiting for the project to be completed.

From a cost perspective, rushing a project universally equates to added costs. And inadequate planning is the most common reason for projects to go awry.

Investigate early, specify clearly, and communicate regularly with your provider about order processing, shipping points, tracking numbers, and any known shipping delays.

Assuming IT grasps the political and leadership challenges of your school

Our management model and the model used by many charter schools are to utilize part-time support resources. In fact our most efficient model places support engineers in the school only a few times each week. And presumably that time is spent solving complex technical issues, rather than circumnavigating power struggles, personality clashes, and addressing individual agendas.

In large measure these are the realities of any organization, so one of the most powerful tools we have used to overcome these very normal challenges is to hold periodic (monthly at least) Technology Advisory Committee (TAC) meetings.

TAC meetings are an invaluable source of information for all involved. Problems can be better identified, the merits of proposed projects can be openly debated, and consensus can be built. A well formed TAC will consist of Technology Managers, Administrators, Department Heads, and representatives of other significant stakeholders. Parent and BOD representatives are especially helpful in this exchange and often provide invaluable “end user” insight.

Summary

Placing your technology team into the appropriate organizational level is an important first step in improving your IT management. Consider that most fortune 500 companies now have Chief Information Officers as part of the highest levels of their management team.

Information systems drive so much school activity and management process that you cannot afford to view IT as the guys who fix computers. And tolerating inadequate IT support staff is very costly. If you don't have the level of expertise you need, get it.

For concrete ways to do this, consider making improvements in the five areas listed above. A helpful moniker is “Just do it!”,… not “Let’s undo it”.

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.

Putting a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution to work in your school

A core assumption in the Charter School movement is competition. Most competitive measures are geared toward educational outcomes. But before you can compete in the area of outcomes you must compete in the arena of sound business management. Running the business side of a Charter School is enormously challenging. In addition to the key metric of recruiting students, you must manage all kinds of relationships with parents, teachers, administrative staff, board members, volunteers, the community, vendors, and regulatory agencies.
Managing a school is a relationship management intensive undertaking! And how well you manage these crucial relationships will have a far reaching impact on your organization. But how many of you are using any kind of a Customer Relationship Management program? More specifically, how many of you are using a CRM system that is deeply integrated into your existing information systems?
Increasing numbers and types of businesses are adopting Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.  CRM systems cover a lot of territory: sales, marketing, case management, and documentation; so making general observation here is not really going to help. But try to imagine how different your school would look if you had a system in place that could help quantify measures of performance, more clearly define and manage processes, automate administrative tasks, centralize information, and increase the capacity of your staff to work in a more unified manner.
A CRM system is not a simple solution to implement, but managing the business of a Charter School is not a simple undertaking. And while complex systems require thoughtful planning, testing, and deployment; the complexity exists whether or not you have such programs. Traditional school districts have a huge advantage. Although they deal with the same array of relationships they also have significant resource advantages and economics of scale, often employing an entire team to accomplish what a solitary administrator is expected to do.
The best way to overcome this inherent disadvantage is a Customer Relationship Management System designed specifically for Charter Schools.
From a funding perspective, students and their families are your paying customers. But in reality you have a long list of “customers”, or groups without which you could not function.  And as simple as it may sound, keeping them happy is most likely to occur when using a Customer Relationship Management system designed just for that purpose.
Nobody likes a hard sell, and perhaps that is what comes to mind when you hear about CRM software. In fact effective CRM programs do more than just build brand awareness, deliver consistent marketing messages, and track interaction with potential customers until you “sell” them. CRM systems help you manage all of the aspects of the important relationships that define your organization and make it as easy as possible to do business with you.
Customer Relationship Management software has been successfully implemented in all kinds of businesses, and for the same reasons it makes sense for your school. Consider things you could do with a CRM system designed for a Charter School:
Contact Management

• Centralize the essential contact information for students and their families and tie it to their Student Information Records
• Consolidate all other contact lists for the school into a single source and enjoy a much more accurate source of information
• Identify relationships among the various contacts to better understand communication requirements and preferences
• Communicate effortlessly with any combination of individuals within groups and track those communications for accountability
• Streamline the records update process by distributing the task to the end points of interaction
• Provide financial and case management records for context (as allowed by security roles) within your contact information

Marketing

• Create, execute, and measure campaigns for recruiting, fundraising, and volunteering
• Communicate with potential students at the frequency and intensity of their interest level
• Track all interactions with potential students, donors, and volunteers and measure defined goals of those relationships
• Build better relationships through consistent messaging, improved responsiveness, and uniform processes
• Manage Social Media campaigns

Case Management

• Establish workflow and manage documentation for new student from application to entrance
• Manage facilities and contractors with workflows and centralized documentation 
• Manage support issues (help desk) for all kinds of issues - technical, personnel, facilities, finance
• Track grants and funding opportunities with better reminders of deadlines and tasks management
• Comply with Board Meeting minutes publications using permission based workflow and oversight
• Manage questions, complaints, or discipline with current students (outside of SIS)
• Streamline communication with key team members by centralizing information stores
• Develop a centralized policy and procedure knowledgebase
• Manage field trips, group events, and meetings

Fee Management

• Manage student fees and simplify the reconciliation process for finance
• Centralize accounting for all sales or service fee collection for all groups in or out of the  student store
• Improve the process for collecting library fees, yearbooks , DVD sales, and sporting equipment
• Integrate the accounting and development functions for fundraising and donation management
• Document and improve collection for property damage fines
• Improve inventory management for all product based items

As you can see, this is a pretty comprehensive list of features touching many departments and individuals both in and out of the school. As such the architecture of this system is vital. In order for this system to succeed it must have a common and familiar interface, utilize existing rather than new policies and procedures, and it must be a cloud based solution with unrestricted availability from anywhere on any device.
Our recommended solution is Microsoft Dynamics CRM online configured specifically for use in the Charter School Community and managed with familiar tools you use every day – Microsoft Outlook, Word, and the other Microsoft Office programs. But whatever solution you choose it must be capable of delivering administrative efficiencies to support the non-academic aspects of your school.
One last point - while we did not directly address the educational side of your organization, it too will be greatly enhanced by a CRM system.

Technology Management or Technical Support – there is a difference

In a perfect world, you would have a Chief Information Officer to help guide your school through the ocean of technology choices, and there are plenty. Desktops or Laptops, on-premise infrastructure or hosted, PC's or Macs (or a combination), and the list goes on. Decisions are heavily influenced by the premises you occupy, existing networking infrastructure, and the demographics of your student population. And of course there is the reality of your budget, your e-Rate eligibility, and the disposition of your board.

All of these decisions directly impact the form and function of your school and they should not be taken lightly. But are you the best qualified to make those decisions? And if not who is?

As it turns out, it might be your IT support company or not, it all depends…

Back at the turn of the last century (like early 1900's), my grandfather earned the nickname of Ray "Henry Ford" Hall, because of his ability to repair the early models of cars being then produced by the Ford Motor Company. Actually, he could fix just about anything. Apparently I inherited his insatiable desire to understand how things work and to a lesser extent how to fix things. At an early age, I was dismantling toasters, bicycles, radios, and just about any mechanical device that I could get my hands on. Like my grandfather, I could fix just about anything that was broken.

 
Fast forward 100 years, and consider the corollary in the world of technical support.

 
Entrance into the world of computer repair is wide open and similar to the mechanics of last century. Some of the cleverest technicians I have worked with have no post-secondary education, few certifications, and few credentials. Yet they can resolve computer issues with blazing speed and uncanny thoroughness. You may even have a few of them on staff.

That talent, as important as it is, has precious little to do with making sound technology management decisions. To prove my point, consider the evolution of the Chief Information Officer position. CIO's are becoming key executives at a growing number of companies. The increase in productivity generated by automation and information systems is driving significant profits to the bottom line. That lesson should not be lost in the translation from business to education. Every Charter School needs access to the guidance of a CIO.

I could easily make the case for financial reasons alone, having witnessed hundreds of thousands of dollars lost to poor decision making and execution of technology projects. But money aside, the weightier matter is the education of our children. Every moment a teacher is interrupted by a technical challenge or prevented from accessing a source of information or is required to spend time doing repetitive mindless administrative tasks, is a moment they are not educating my children and yours. And that is a real problem!

So have I convinced you to run out and hire a Chief Information Officer for your school? Good luck, the board will probably send you for a drug test! Seriously, how do you obtain the services of a CIO, when the going salary for a competent network engineer is 150% of your highest paid administrator! It's not a sustainable proposition.

 
The solution is simple and many of you are using the model already, just for different things. For example how many of you contract for special education services, school lunch programs, or financial management? Those are crucial programs that have wide adoption in the charter school community. So why not technology managers? I submit that it boils down to two reasons, money and expectations. In the above examples there are specific funds designated for such services and they pay for themselves. But expectations for technology management simply don't exist. IT staff fix computers; business managers, principals, board members, or PTO presidents make technology infrastructure decisions. Not true? I beg you to be candid about your own organization and what or who drives these policy decisions.

In a meeting with a school administrator, not long ago, I was shocked to hear her state that the only criterion for hiring technical support personnel was cost. "I will go with the lowest cost provider" she proudly stated. Upon digging a little further, I discovered she had hired her nephew instead and her comments were probably more for the financial manager sitting in the next room than for me. I have also observed principals being cajoled by the technology teachers into implementing wholesale changes in the computer lab, only to have that teacher leave the school within the year. I have observed software purchase decisions costing thousands of more dollars because of a lack of Academic licensing experience, and the list goes on.

The very best schools we operate were purpose built from the ground up and continue to have reliable, affordable, and relevant information systems. We submit that is because we have significant experience managing Charter School technology. We have also observed complete chaos at schools where technology decisions were made by well-intentioned principals who simply had no business making these kinds of decisions.

 
When searching for a Technology Manager, you should minimally have on your list of requirements experience, focus, and reputation. You need to work with someone with experience not only in educational technology, but Charter School educational technology specifically. Ensure that your management team has a clear focus on education and that you are not just one of a dozen different types of businesses they serve, and finally check the reputation of your candidates. Most of the time you find long term relationships exist with technology managers and the schools they serve; ideally they might well serve on the board.

Do your homework, be cautious about using well-meaning internal resources that have only basic skills, and check references of past and present customers. And finally, be sure you are working with a service provider who understands e-Rate, the federal reimbursement mechanism. Your technology costs can be dramatically lowered by structuring resources to maximize e-Rate reimbursement.