School Tech Support Costs on the Rise

Posted on August 30, 2007 by Alvin Trusty

Here is shocking story from eSchool News.  As if schools had anywhere to go but up.  It seems the trend is the same as I remember it years ago.  For many schools, total cost of ownership equals acquisition cost.

Now that core infrastructures require more personal attention (tech support), districts are cutting professional development and instructional applications to make ends meet.

Most districts in Ohio have between one and two support people.  When I have my students research the numbers they typically find each support person is responsible for 200 to 400 computers.  These computers run everything from Windows 9x to XP (maybe Vista in a few cases now), OS X and maybe even Linux.  Add the servers on top of that and maybe a district wide phone system or POS system in the cafeteria.

In Ohio we have experienced a funding drought from the state in the last few years.  Many districts have drastically reduced the hardware budget.  It would not surprise me if these shifts in the percentages (no dollar figures are given in this report) aren’t due to the fact that schools aren’t buying the hardware they were a few years ago.  I don’t see more people being hired.  I see fewer support people in schools now than I have at any time in the last ten years.

This entry was posted in edtech and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to School Tech Support Costs on the Rise

  1. Pingback: University Update - Kate Beckinsale - School Tech Support Costs on the Rise

  2. John Schinker says:
    September 1, 2007 at 9:49 am

    The big issue is time. In our district (~4800 students, ~1400 computers), we have three full-time tech people. We do a pretty good job of handling the desktop support, and even with “new” challenges like managing our email in-house, cafeteria POS, data integration among student records / internal network accounts / cafeteria POS / transportation / online gradebook systems, we’re keeping our heads above water.

    But instructional integration and staff development are almost non-existent. I’ve always made the argument that we need to take a basic needs kind of approach. We have the national school lunch program because hungry kids can’t learn. The same is true with technology. It has to work, and it has to work reliably and consistently, or nobody is going to use it. So that has to be the first priority. After we’ve met those needs, we can focus on integration and staff development.

    Unfortunately, the appetite for adding new technologies always outpaces the capacity for keeping them working. So the integration and staff development rarely get done.

    It’s less of a case of needing money than a case of needing time. If it’s structured correctly, you can do a lot of work in this area without spending a lot of money. But it does take a lot of time, and we don’t have the people to spend that time. It seems like every time I start down that path, something critical breaks, and I’m back in support world again.