Being School District Admin? 161
Bananatree3 asks: "I am a high schooler in a fairly large school district, and have always wondered what it is like to manage a large school network. What is it like to be a school district admin? What kind of unique things do you have to do that are outside the realm of 'normal' IT departments? When is the most hectic/slow time for you? How big of a network do you manage? Also, do you have any favorite stories about being a school district IT admin?"
Deli Meat (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Deli Meat (Score:2)
Or trying to put the little rubber band back over the gears in the front of the CDROM drive.
Re:Deli Meat (Score:1)
Pens and pennies (Score:2)
In the former, our kids loved to stick pens and pennies into the drive. There's also a significant problem at several schools with theft. Workplaces may have issues with theft, but replacing the ball-mice with optical-mice in a lab only to have one dissappear 15 minutes later is somewhat disconcerting.
Food issues include massive wads of gum under desks, chip wrappers, rotten bananas, etc.
In the current distict, I've heard stories from co-workers about teena
Re:Pens and pennies (Score:2)
Re:Deli Meat (Score:1)
Re:Deli Meat (Score:2)
Re:Deli Meat (Score:2)
Don't ask us (Score:1, Insightful)
You left out the question you really want to ask (Score:5, Funny)
"Also, hypothetically speaking, how would someone go about getting in and changing grades? Strictly hypothetically, of course."
Re:You left out the question you really want to as (Score:3, Funny)
Re:You left out the question you really want to as (Score:1)
Re:You left out the question you really want to as (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You left out the question you really want to as (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You left out the question you really want to as (Score:2, Insightful)
But I don't entirely disagree
Re:You left out the question you really want to as (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, because I'm sure that the school has a dedicated, well-trained sysadmin.
Whoops, looks like I mistyped "has a chemistry teacher working part time with computer shit he doesn't actually understand". Damned typos.
Seriously, have you ever looked at the payscales in public education? Anyone who could design and lock down the network properly is outside of their financial reach.
--saint
I was one for 3 years,.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I was one for 3 years,.. (Score:2)
However, yes, you make a valid (and humorous) point.
Re:I was one for 3 years,.. (Score:1)
Re:I was one for 3 years,.. (Score:2, Funny)
That coupled with the fact that my school district apparently has one, *maybe* two guys for all of the (4) schools, makes pretty much anything possible.
SD IT 2K (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:SD IT 2K (Score:1)
Organizational skills are key!
The guy I worked for rigged the switches seemingly randomly, making repair/replace take a LOOONG time.
Re:SD IT 2K (Score:2)
1) The custodial staff cannot be relied on to move/clean anything that's vaguely technology related. It's not in their contract, so they don't do it! Expect lots of manual labor.
2) A good security policy shouldn't allow spyware or any other programs to be installed for that matter. Image
Re:SD IT 2K (Score:2)
Don't know how your district is, but some of them require competitive bids to buy a stapler, much less hire someone. I now have the strong belief that American schools suck mainly because of the corruption and red tape imposed by the local officials.
Re:SD IT 2K (Score:2)
Re:SD IT 2K (Score:2)
Having few resources and many varied computers to maintain (and an onslaught of kids determined to ruin them), I came up with a solution using a small linux install to keep a local image of each computer on its own harddrive. The computer would then first boot into linux and then, based on the parameters set, would either rebuild from the windows image, or just reboot int
Re:SD IT 2K (Score:2)
Except that my solution did it for $0 licensing per computer...
We were in a tight budget situation (see my reply below), having laid off IT staff and teachers. I had no money to spend on "frills" like DeepFreeze. But I was also tired of a couple middle-school labs requiring constant attention. I added menu items to lilo so that the computer didn't rebuild on every reboot - but instead as a lilo option. That way, the librarian
District Management (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:District Management (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:District Management (Score:2)
And remember that you're responsible for maintaining the computers with all the software. You do realize that for a variety of reasons, installing one piece of software can break another software's installation.
So, if you're responsible for maintaining 40 different pieces of
Re:District Management (Score:2)
That's something the students at the college where I work don't seem to understand. I get a little bit of that from faculty, but most of them are pretty reasonable about what they ask and expect. But some of the students seem to think that not only is it my job to comply wi
Re:District Management (Score:2)
seem to think that not only is it my job to comply with their every request, but to anticipate it or detect it remotely
While the students are probably bratty, it IS a good thing if you can anticipate problems and solve them before they become someone else's problems. Of course,
Re:District Management (Score:2)
Re:District Management (Score:2)
We were fortunate in that we had more people interested in the pretty-easy labaide job than we could possibly schedule. I had a system (inherited from my boss) of scheduling them each term based on their requested hours, longevity, and how good they were.
Basically if you were a senior, and had worked all 4 years, and did a good job, you'd get your pick of the hours. Those who did not do their jobs well tended to not get many hours in the next term (if any), and if the
Re:District Management (Score:2)
My boss got
a terrible job (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:a terrible job (Score:2)
Why does anyone care? If some 13 year old has enough determination to get past the firewalls and look at pornography, I tell him good luck. That and of course ban him permenantly from my network for the rest of his days. If he really needs to use the net, he can, but only with lynx.
Re:a terrible job (Score:2)
Welcome to the world of ASCII pr0n! [spacebarcowboy.com] NSFW (or school districts) !!!!
Re:a terrible job (Score:2)
If someone is willing to go to those lengths, I think the internet is the least of their problems. That said, I'm not sure lynx supports css sheets.
Re:a terrible job (Score:2)
Re:a terrible job (Score:2)
I'm just a bit annoyed that I can hardly get any work done since the new filter came in. Every site not on its own domain name (2nd level), or hosted at a uni gets blocked. Anything which is decided could be bad gets blocked. I've had to throw out an entire project because genetic modification to brewers' yeast isn't allowed past the filter (alcohol). Google Cache? Nope. Wayback machine? Not allowed either.
At least I'm allowed to use Ope
Teach the users to help themselves... (Score:2)
Re:Teach the users to help themselves... (Score:2)
Answers From A School District IT (Score:5, Interesting)
What is it like to be a school district admin? What kind of unique things do you have to do that are outside the realm of 'normal' IT departments?
One of the things that's a bit quirky, but not much different than most other IT departments is how the users are made to interact with the personel.
Often times you will get a teacher who has done something to their compuer that is outside the scope of the service agreement which the department has with the school, and then wants the IT department to fix it for free.
Because school districts work on tax budgets, our method of dealing with purchases and such is interesting as well. The IT department makes administrative decisions without consulting the school board, and thus, is not allowed, in any part, to be unionized.
We recieve a budget from the school board that we use to pay for our costs, (like buying parts or laptops or a new server), and then the schools, out of their budget, pay the general fund back for any services they buy from us. Certain services, (like internet, printing, etc.), are provided for free. Others cost the school money that they pay back to the district.
When is the most hectic/slow time for you?
By far, the most hectic time is September-November. All the new things that got implemented over the summer are being used for the first time, and things go wrong.
How big of a network do you manage?
I can't really give specifics... but its upwards a quarter million computers over a hundred or so square miles.
Also, do you have any favorite stories about being a school district IT admin?
We use Novell ZEN Works around the district, and by far, the most common misconception among users is that 'snapping' an application, (a network driven installation), means they no longer need the CD to use the program. *rolls eyes* We distribute applications, we don't crack them.
The students usually provide the best stories though. One of the onsite technicians was in a classroom removing sound drivers, (the students had been wasting time in class listening to things and the teacher requested we fix that), and noticed a student attempting to circumvent the security policy and reinstall his sound drivers. The technician remote controlled his computer from across the room and typed into the command prompt "Don't do anything stupid". The kids in the class gathered round in astonishment saying things like "they can't do that
Re:Answers From A School District IT (Score:2, Interesting)
good stuff.
Re:Answers From A School District IT (Score:2)
Re:Answers From A School District IT (Score:3, Insightful)
No -1 Flamebait from me, but I do wonder why you work for a public school district.
Re:Answers From A School District IT (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Answers From A School District IT (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Answers From A School District IT (Score:2)
When the Washington DC school system is the best in the nation, the Feds will be able to claim they know more about running schools than anybody else. Until it is, instead of the cesspit it is now, they should shut up and mind their own business.
Re:Answers From A School District IT (Score:2)
When the Washington DC school system is the best in the nation, the Feds will be able to claim they know more about running schools than anybody else.
Shows what you know - the city runs the school system, not the Feds. All the feds do is harrass the city over each little expenditure. I like to think of it as Marion Barry's legacy.
Re:Answers From A School District IT (Score:2)
Um, no one said it was. But it is a form of socialism, albeit on a local level. If someone thinks public schools should be abolished because of that, I can respect that (while disagreeing entirely). But for someone to say he doesn't believe in socialism while supporting one example of it is either playing Orwellian word-redefinition games, or (more likely) simply doesn't understand what he's talking about.
jefferson was a socialist! (Score:2)
This isn't just my opinion, it's
Re:jefferson was a socialist! (Score:2)
Re:jefferson was a socialist! (Score:2)
Your argument is mere assertion.
Public schools are not an example of social
Re:Answers From A School District IT (Score:2)
Um, no one said it was. But it is a form of socialism, albeit on a local level.
So fucking what? You act as if Socialism was automatically a bad thing, when it's quite often the best idea - the national power grid is a form of socialism and it works just fine. National Health Care is socialist, but it's a damn good idea.
Re:Answers From A School District IT (Score:2)
Let's just say that the 'experience required' to work at the school district is proportional to how it pays its positions comparably with the rest of the industry.
Re:Answers From A School District IT (Score:2)
Key word can. At our school district, although they have VNC on all the machines and they can monitor the Internet traffic, I know that they don't in general. They switched the content filter from a default-allow system to a default-deny system last week because people were finding new proxies faster than the filter software caught them. If they simply watched a random sample of computers - or monitored computers with suspiciously high HTTP traffic
Re:Answers From A School District IT (Score:2)
Los Angeles? No, you're about 1500 miles off.
Geoffrey's Corollary to Hanlon's Razor: Nobody has a monopoly on stupidity.
Re:Answers From A School District IT (Score:2)
Well, as we do have spam filters and we use customly created user levels across the board... I somehow doubt it. Although, I might volunteer that often the proble
Quick points (Score:5, Informative)
2) Expect vandalism of the computers. All cases should be locked. All equipment rooms should be locked.
3) In general, the faculty has not a clue how to use a computer. They actually tend to be less teachable than the average person. If you have 50 faculty, 2 might be knowledgeable (as in, enough to build computers and such), 5 will not have to contact you about anything as they can fix it, and the rest will be nightmares.
Re:Quick points (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Quick points (Score:1)
Re:Quick points (Score:2)
Last year there was tape over the switches, this year they've been epoxied in place. I'd have loved watch a computer being turned on like that...
-ReK
Interestingly... (Score:4, Interesting)
A less-than-generous assessment (Score:2, Interesting)
In one school district, the principals of each school got Windows laptops which were completely locked down. When one principal asked them to install an 802.11 card, she was told she wasn't allowed one because it was a security risk. This is the same district that turns OFF the mail server at night and weekends for security purposes. Heck, why not leave it off all the time, then?
In another, m
Only one way to go (Score:3, Interesting)
Stick one server in each room where there are more than N clients and make a subnet out of the room. N varies based on network speed, server size and typical client load.
Server is headless, keyboardless, mouseless, administered remotely.
Diskless clients almost never breakdown, and need very little RAM to run effectively.
All this concentrates your admin work to the servers and network equipment. (and replacing mice and kybds). And user accounts are more easily admined as well. Of course all user accounts should be managed on a centralized server/authorization system.
If licensing and managing licensing for all the servers and clients and user's email etc.. becomes problemsome or too expensive, all licensing concerns can be eliminated by using k12ltsp, a proven thin client system allready in operation at many schools in the USA and many other countries.
http://www.k12ltsp.org/ [k12ltsp.org]
Re:Only one way to go (Score:1)
1) put a few Knoppix for Kids stations in the elementary libraries (no-one knows how to use them - no-one being the adults as the kids loved the icons and thought they had a new toy)
2) showed a cost difference between MS office and openoffice...
3) provided the form for FREE StarOffice 7 for the ENTIRE district to the CTO (and then to the purchasing agent when that did not work)
4) showed the cost difference (tech support included) on some classroom setups as i
Re:Only one way to go (Score:2)
Re:Only one way to go (Score:2)
Oh yeah, don't take their Ms Office away, they can't use it, but don't take it away.
Funny how no one sees a problem with spending 150 USD(educational discount) per MS Office license just to teach kids brand loyalty.
I set up a 55 computer k12ltsp lab a few years ago and have found that most kids and teachers don't really care what they're using as long as they can use the internet and write and print documents. The setup was volunteer w
Re:Only one way to go (Score:2)
If you can get permission, make the servers *nix. Not just for the obvious security/stability issues, but because unlike Gatesware, *nix servers will come back up after a power failure without needing somebody to come around and log in. If you have Gatesware servers all over the campus, it can take hours to get them all up and running if there's only one tech to go around and log into each one. And even if there's something that needs h
Re:Only one way to go (Score:2)
Re:Only one way to go (Score:2)
Re:Only one way to go (Score:2)
Ah yes, the almighty site block (Score:2)
I know many young people with artistic talent whom use (or could use) DA as an art repository. Despite my arguements against censoring it I was ultimately forced to blacklist the site
Re:Easier Said than done (Score:2)
Bootable NICs [disklessworkstations.com] can be had for 20 USD or less. And if you can't spring for those, you can still do etherboot [sourceforge.net] from a floppy, a CD, or an old hard drive.
Plus, as cool as terminal clients are, it is hard to muster up the hardware to support the server side. Remember your budget is often somewhere close or below 0.
I'm not following you here.
Of course you need to spend some money for har
Constant trouble (Score:3, Informative)
OS X... (Score:2)
Re:OS X... (Score:1)
Re:OS X... (Score:2)
Key differentiation (Score:3, Interesting)
Simply put: Wherein most organizations are trying to protect themselves from the internet - at a school district, they try to protect the internet from their organization.
Re:Key differentiation (Score:2)
Okay, okay, okay, phew, let me start breathing again. *deep breath*.
A HAHAHAHAHA.
You, sir, WIN THE INTERNET. That is, without a doubt, the single most accurate statement EVER TO HAVE BEEN SEEN ON SLASHDOT. Not to mention the most well-phrased, and blunt. You, sir, are the winner of all things great. Why? Because you hit the nail square on the head.
School System Admin Speaks Out (Score:2, Interesting)
However its really not that much different from working anywhere else. There might be a little bit more bureaucracy because its a public in
Ok... (Score:2, Interesting)
Windows Networks, all sites see each other, user logins for high and middle schools, windows 5 domains, 40 macs in a lab at the HS, 5 computer labs, 15 servers.
Networks/domains already existed when I got there.
Special things:
student server folders: nightly scripts to delete mp3, zip(sit rar etc) and exe(dmg bin etc)
daily run of quota script and notification to "over/close to the limit" offenders
Funny things:
Middle schoolers taping nickels to cds and putting them in and lea
Network manager - 17-school K-12 school district (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a few challenges that I can think of that deviate from what I encountered in the private sector:
1. Content filtering. Though you probably find content filtering of some sort at most companies, being in a school system I'm *required* to have content filtering by CIPA (Child Internet Protection Act) or risk our federal funding and thereby my job. Unfortunately the extent of what/how you filter is ill-defined. Also unlike a company where as a rule sane adults realize they can get fired for surfing pornography, I have a few thousand middle and high school kids whose hormones are going nuts and often don't consider or care about the consequences. Now, I'm a bleeding heart liberal and censoring by and large goes against my grain, but I believe preventing young children from accidentally being exposed to something they weren't expecting (whitehouse.com instead of whitehouse.gov, for instance) is a good thing. However, if a pubescent child is determined to go looking I don't believe you can stop him from finding it. We could deploy draconian measures to stop it, but then you limit the value of the Internet (example: We blocked google images because there wasn't an easy way to prevent them from switching off the safe-search mode). We (IT) also bounce all requests to block a site that isn't obvious pornography to the curriculum folks for a ruling. That leads to decisions I don't always agree with, such as blocking plannedparenthood.com among others. Content filtering in a K-12 school system is a touchy business, balancing needs/desires of kids, faculty, parents, school board, and CIPA.
2. Funding/staffing. I used to work for the Family Channel. When a new IT project was floated, an adequate budget was attached and off you went. In the school system new IT projects come up all the time, often driven from other departments, but insufficient funding/staffing is attached to it in many cases. Work tends to pile on already busy people and so you get people who are very good at what they do yet they end up doing a half-baked job because they simply can't get to it all. We have a networking staff of 3 people to handle all telecommunications/networking/security (cameras) in the county, and for the 6 years prior to this July, only had 2 on the team. This is probably the most frustrating part of my job. We also have to deal with bidding procedures. Anything over $10,000 has to be put out to bid and approved by the school board. That makes something we might normally do in a few days to a couple of weeks (evaluate and decide to purchase a product) take a month or more. You also end up justifying an IT decision to people who might not understand the nuances of why the lower bidder isn't the best solution.
3. Atmosphere. This is why I work for the school system. It's *so* much more relaxed and rewarding than working in the private sector. Work in the private sector and you're making money for someone. Work in a school system and you really can give something back to society. It may sound cheesy, and certainly isn't my only motivation, but it really feels good to use your talents somewhere where chasing money isn't the goal. When the kids go "it's the computer man!" and light up when you fix their computer it's a rewarding warm fuzzy. I also get to work in jeans and comfortable shirts, work 8 - 4:30, get 2 weeks off for Christmas, 1 week for spring break, 1 week for fall break, 10 vacation days a year, 9 or so sick days, 2 personal days, and all the standard school holidays. My boss is fine if I want to go grab an hour at my daughter's school to watch her school play. It's a really personal life/family friendly work atmosphere. Of course, there are downsides as well -- for instance I often have worked over spring break or Christmas break to do things while the faculty/kids are out, but that's not unique to the school system environment. Just didn't want to give the impression it was all wine and ro
Re:Network manager - 17-school K-12 school distric (Score:3, Informative)
Just add "&safe=vss" to the end of all queries sent to *.google.com. If you have a proxy, there's probably an easy way to do this. Our school district implements this, probably through their Lightspeed Systems' filter.
Also unlike a company where as a rule sane adults realize they can get fired for surfing pornography, I have a few thousand middle and high school kids whose hormones
Re:Network manager - 17-school K-12 school distric (Score:2)
Seems like a sweet deal to me - I'd take a $10K paycut for that in a heartbeat.
Re:Network manager - 17-school K-12 school distric (Score:2, Interesting)
Did I mention during the summer we work 4 10-hour days (7 AM - 5 PM) and have 3 day weekends?
not quite district admin... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:not quite district admin... (Score:2)
That's certainly possible, but it's just as likely that they're overwhelmed cat-herders trying desperately to keep things from falling into utter chaos.
K-12 (Score:1)
I don't know about you... (Score:1)
Re:I don't know about you... (Score:1)
Re:I don't know about you... (Score:2)
Quite simply... don't bother. (Score:2, Interesting)
I have been in the education field, though not technically as a sysadmin. I have done a lot of my own system administration in at least one school, though, because the actual designated IT person was clueless and the security was so poor that I could change any setting I wanted.
For example, we had two computers in a teacher's lounge, one of which was connected to a simple inkjet printer. This computer got some virus, and the cure was apparently to wipe the hard drive and start over. I had nothing to do
Experiences in the late 90's (Score:1)
What I manage... (Score:2)
I'm a contractor that's been with a fairly small district (2500 student enrollment) for about eight (8) years. I'm a self-employeed contractor, and work with a mix of educational, governmental, and private-industry Customers.
At my districg, I manage ten (10) servers (Windows NT Server 4.0, Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003, and a couple different flavours of Fedora Linux), and a mostly Cisco Systems branded Ethernet infrastructure. I've got about five-hundred (500) Windows XP Professional-based PC'
Re:What I manage... (Score:2, Insightful)
I also note that you did not once call your clients "idiots," "morons," or the like, which seems to be a significant problem on this thread.
Welcome... (Score:2)
I welcome you to the world where instead of a technocracy we have mediocracy. Management (of any kind) will always resist change, sometimes despite obvious benefits.
Let's assume that they did what you said, and it worked perfectly, no better than perfectly, that it beamed knowledge directly into the kid's heads. The question will come up why a student was the one to suggest it and why wasn't it discovered and implemented earlier. Making the "profe
Re:Missing mouse balls (Score:2)