Earlier today I listened to KDE’s Monthly Webcast for Technology Leaders for the month of May. I was listening mostly because I wanted to know how much of a cut to expect in our KETS Offers of Assistance, which is the amount of money that the state offers to the local school district for local technology funding. The school district, if it decides to accept the money, must agree to match it, spending the same number of local dollars on technology. The funding is based on the number of students who attended school in the previous year.
I listened to the webcast waiting to see if I had enough money coming to pay my bills (I had a combined $32,000 in bills from Infinite Campus and our Microsoft Select Agreement, and less than that left in my coffers). I knew a hit was coming, but I didn’t know how much. Most years, the Second Offer of Assistance from the state is somewhere around $12 a student, which would be matched by the school district, giving me $24 a student. In my district, our student count for 2010-11 was a little more than 2,035. That meant that I had built my budget for this year with the idea that the district would receive around $48,840 in the second semester for technology. Then during the webcast the dollar amount for this year was announced: $8 per student. That means that I can expect to receive only $32,560 for technology this semester, $14,000 and a third less than I had originally planned for.
But that wasn’t the really bad news. We were also told what to expect for next year: In the first half of the school year–when we also expect to typically receive $12 per student (plus the $12 district match), next year we can expect to receive only $11 per student. And in the spring of next year, we can expect only $5 per student! This means that–with both KETS Offers and district matches figured in–my district will not receive the $97,680 or so dollars typical for a school year. Instead, I can plan to receive only $65,120 or so. And that’s assuming that our enrollment stays at 2,035! Our enrollment is actually down some this year, with a projected ADA of right at or possibly even slightly below 2,000. If that holds true, if our ADA for this school year ends up at only 1,990 or so, we can expect only $63,680 for technology funds next year, only 65% of a typical year.
In any year, that kind of a cut in funding would be a problem. This year, though, the cut is disastrous. Here’s why: Not only are the KETS funds expiring, but six years ago the state budget included $24 million for the upgrade of student computers. Now, six years later, those computers are all in need of replacement, but the state budget didn’t include another infusion of $24 million. That’s a huge problem. In fact, my school district’s current technology plan (which you can view at http://www.erlanger.kyschools.us/technology) anticipates $146,539 of KETS funds for the 2012-13 year, more than the typical $24 per student per year (more like $36 per student per year), but that amount covers both the typical KETS offer and half of the amount needed to refresh the district IDU machines. So I planned for $36 per student and I’m getting $16. Couple that with the expected denial of almost $40,000 worth of E-Rate internal connection funds, and my 2012-13 budget just went from being “maybe a little bit unrealistic in its goals” to “an out and out fantasy.”
I get the feeling that I’m not alone, either. Talking to CIO’s from other school districts in Kentucky, I know that there are others who also realize that–before KDE has even had a chance to look at and approve our 2012-13 technology plans–those plans are already out of date and going to be underfunded. Throughout the Commonwealth, technology leaders in school district are going to be looking at what they had PLANNED to do in 2012-13, and they’re going to be making some hard decisions.
In my district, we’ve already anticipated what we’d planned to do that we’re now not going to be able to do. We had over 200 computers we were planning to refresh next year–80 staff workstations and 120 student workstations. That’s almost 20% of our installation base. We don’t plan to replace ANY of them now. We can’t. 200 computers times $600 per machine is $120,000, twice what we can now expect to get from KETS and matching district funds. In addition, we were planning to upgrade the wireless system at Miles Elementary School. Every school in the district except Miles is running on a brand new wireless system that is super fast–almost as fast for wireless devices as those plugged in via a patch cable. Miles, meanwhile, is using a wireless network that is several years older, several years closer to failure, and many times slower. But with e-rate Internal Connections not expected to get down to 80%, that project is expected to go undone as well. Finally, the installation of a device that would allow the district to more closely monitor the wireless devices that are attaching to our network (and more and more of them are every day) will have to be put off for another year.
In many ways, these cuts couldn’t have come at a worse time. Technology is changing rapidly these days. No, I really mean it! I know that technology ALWAYS changes rapidly. That’s the nature of technology. But this is different. Thanks to the iPad, the Kindle Fire, and a host of other, cheap devices, more and more students and staff and community members and guests are carrying their own mobile computing devices around with them. And these people can get wireless almost anywhere. McDonald’s has free Wi-Fi. The local public library has free Wi-Fi. Heck, my neighborhood public pool sent out fliers encouraging people to join, and the number one improvement they trumpeted on the flier, the thing that was listed just below the name of the pool in the largest letters of all: “We now have free Wi-Fi!” People expect to be able to get on their wireless devices everywhere, and schools need to get on board with that idea or they’ll lose whatever relevance they’re still perceived as having.
But we can’t just open up the Internet and turn it on. In many districts, the infrastructure will need to be upgraded. And even in districts (like ours) that have a dense wireless presence, students will need to be taught the proper way to behave in an open environment, and teachers and staff will need training in how to best use the environment, and there will need to be changes to the network in order to better monitor the environment. And once students and staff start using this open wireless network, they’re going to start demanding services that cost money, things like cloud-based applications and online textbooks and learning management systems. And all of that is going to cost money. So this cut is coming at the worst possible time!
On the other hand, it’s also coming at the best possible time. It occurred to me the other day that there’s never been a time as far as I know when my school district was better positioned to upgrade rather than replace our aging workstations. Because the speed with which processing power has increased has lessened over the last few years, and because most applications that people use don’t require huge amounts of processing anyway, those IDU machines from six years ago don’t seem THAT outdated. Yes, we purchased them with only 1 GB of RAM, and yes they don’t have quad-core processors in them, but these IDU machines were built to run on Windows Vista, which was the most resource-hungry operating system ever invented. Windows 7 used fewer resources, and Windows 8 uses even fewer. As I mentioned before, there’s no way that we can spend $120,00 replacing 200 workstations next year–we just don’t have the money. However, upgrading the RAM on those machines from 1 GB to 4 GB costs $60 per machine, or only $12,000. And thanks to our agreement with Microsoft, we can upgrade those machines from Windows XP to Windows 7 or 8 at no cost. Hopefully we can get another 3 years out of most of those machines, and it will only cost a tenth of what replacement would have cost. Sure, there’ll be some hands on work on the part of technology staff that we wouldn’t have to normally do (especially in regards to the faculty machines, which will no doubt have files on them that will need to be backed up and put back on the machine after the upgrade), and some of the machines are going to fail due to their age, but overall we should be able to squeak by. Hopefully, when the next two year legislative session begins, we’ll be able to get money in the state budget to replace them.
Again, as I said, we’re in a uniquely ideal place for that plan. Can you imagine six years ago trying to implement that same plan? Six years ago the machines that were six years old were purchased in 1999-2000 and were running either Windows 95 or–if we were really lucky–Windows 2000. They had a 350 MHz processor and 64 MB of RAM (maybe 128 or–if we’d really splurged back in 2000–256 MB of RAM), and probably a 10 GB hard drive. Can you imagine in 2006 trying to upgrade those machines and make them last until 2009? It would have been impossible. But here in 2012, with the explosion of tablets leading to a point where people are intentionally purchasing new computing devices with drastically LESS processing power than their current home computer (and being delighted with the end result!), we can make such plans without feeling foolhardy.
That’s my hope anyway…