Mon Sep 28 2015, 5:00pm
District Meeting Room
Regular Meeting

REPORTS TO THE BOARD

Technology Director Report

Date: September 22, 2015
To: Michael Green
From: Steve Rippl
Subject: Tech Dept. Executive Summary

 

It’s been a long summer! I wasn’t sure what it was actually going to look like until we got into it, and I’m very grateful that we had the extra staff available because without them we simply wouldn’t have made it! Fitting out the high school and rearranging 3 others was obviously a massive undertaking for the District as a whole, and while the doors are open and teaching and learning have begun again, our work isn’t finished yet. Most hardware is where is needs to be, but the background configuration of settings, software, access and general organization (even down to things like accurate names for things) will take a while to catch up fully. Our department isn’t just responsible for a wired network and some desktops and servers anymore, we now have District wide wireless and as many wireless clients as desktops. We’re deeply involved with classroom AV systems, phones, paging systems and bell schedules, camera and access systems, point of sale and video display units, and even to a small degree hvac systems (in that we need to ensure they talk on our network). Anytime these things alter in some way we need to be involved, and there’s been a lot of that lately!

Our staff have been very gracious and understanding of the situation. While they wait for us to fix some of the smaller things they have been overwhelming kind about the work we’ve put in, and patient while we prioritize other more the urgent things. We quickly got up to nearly 300 open helpdesk tickets at the start of school (a new record), but we’ve already almost halved that so things are moving along pretty quickly.

Losing Steve Brown late in the summer came as a bit of a shock. We had known he was gently looking around, but his new job in Portland came a bit suddenly. The timing was perhaps unfortunate but we wish him well, and William Weaver is proving to be a very worthwhile replacement for him. William has been thrown in at the deep end but he has a great attitude and strong IT skills, I’m grateful he came our way.