- By Dan Veaner
- Business & Technology
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Board of Education (left to right) Dan Brown, Anne Drake, Tom Keane,
Christine Iacobucci, Sandi Dhimitri, Glenn Swanson (Bonita Lindberg not pictured)
"We strongly recommend that the Board seriously consider the adoption of certain components of what you're going to see this evening, sooner as opposed to later," said Superintendent Mark Lewis. "We're looking at addressing needs by virtue of this organizational structure."
The presentation linked immediate needs to the long range plan, showing future goals along with the desperate condition of the current equipment and staffing. District Network Specialist Roger Jagoda explained that the network has two serious problems. First, there is not enough hard drive space for storage. Second, Jagoda said that while the district is lucky to have high speed fiber optic cabling installed, but that outdated switches and other equipment slow down the system unacceptably. "We just can't move data fast enough," he told the Board.
High School Teacher John Kotmel also addressed the Board, telling them that he can not teach his technology courses with the state of the current equipment. Principal Michelle Stone elaborated, saying, "The stop-gap cure is to save everything locally. That is to say store everything inside the machine the student is using at that time. However this means the work is not backed up, it can only be accessed on one machine, it isn't available to students during their work time unless they have access to that machine. Even if there was available disk space, backup capacity has already been eclipsed, so it's doubtful that the current technology could take care of that data."
"Reflecting on previous board meetings, we reflected on certain components of a solution, but really never got our arms around the overall solution," said Lewis. "We were really motivated to look at the situation from 40,000 feet versus 40 feet to see exactly what was needed infrastructure-wise and in organization over the next number of years."
Deb Pichette explains district technology needs, while Dan Brown listens
While this long term approach seemed to be what the board wanted, some board members put Jagoda and administrators on the spot. Dan Brown demanded to know why an immediate solution wasn't being proposed that would provide stop-gap fixes until the long term solutions could be put in place. Christine Iacobucci seemed to accuse Director of Curriculum Deb Pichette of unnecessarily creating the Information Specialist position. "Information and data used to be managed in this district before this year," she said. "And the people who used to do that no longer have that capability. I'm trying to understand how things have changed."
Pichette had explained how changing State mandates for data warehousing and other record keeping have exploded the workload in past board meetings. She stressed the importance of a single person being responsible for all the data to make sure it is accurate across all district records, and that confidential records on students, families, and so on be kept secure by limiting access on a 'need to know' basis. She and Stone both said that the State can and will penalize the district by withholding aid if data keeping mandates are not met, noting that Lansing is already behind in meeting these requirements.
Stone explained, "Things have changed, because the State has changed how they want things reported. With this new system there is a lot of creation of data bases. First you set up the data base, and then you have to pull data, and then you have to do all the cleaning. This is an addition to what was done before. Every year the State asks for more."
Pichette noted that the district could achieve both the Network Specialist and Information Systems Specialist positions this year for the same cost that had been budgeted this year for only the former position through BOCES. Business Administrator Larry Lawrence presented figures showing that the two positions would mean an additional $30,000 next year to pay for the full year's salaries and benefits.
After much debate the Board passed both resolutions, with Iacobucci dissenting and Anne Drake abstaining. Eventually the Technology Committee plans to debate adding three more positions to the department, to better integrate technology with classroom teaching. But for now the district has begun the process of addressing what has been characterized as a desperate situation that places Lansing so far behind the technology curve that its students can't compete with those from other districts.
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