To: Asha Riley
From: Steve Rippl
Date: March 20, 2025
RE: Tech Department Report
Keeping technology hardware up-to-date is always a challenge on limited resources, but I think overall we do a good job of balancing spending as little as possible while still ensuring equipment is current enough to work efficiently for its users. One example of this is something I’ve spoken about in the past couple of reports: how we’re currently building our own desktops to save a couple of hundred dollars on each unit. It takes the guys time to put them together, but it’s something we can do in the office between helpdesk duties, so as long as we're not in any great hurry, it’s an efficient use of our energies. Since December, we’ve worked on building and deploying over 40 new desktops to staff and CTE classrooms, and that project is almost complete; we’re down to our last few!
Another area we’re experimenting with stretching resources further is with our 5-12 student Chromebooks and having the students keep their devices for 8 years instead of just 4. We’re almost done with year 6 for the first cohort to try this (current 10th-grade students), and it seems to be going fine so far. Google has extended software support for ChromeOS to 10 years, so as long as we purchase new enough hardware for them in 5th grade this should work out. We already have the new devices for next year's 5th grade, we ordered early because of the uncertainty around tarifs.
One area where we need to think about investing more again is our K-4 1:1 program. During the levy failure cuts the board understandably removed the resources to maintain those devices. This hasn’t actually affected the elementary school too much up to now because the existing devices have stayed serviceable (see above with the extended software support), but we’re coming up on the time when a large number of these devices will all age out at once leaving our elementary schools with a fraction of the devices they are used to using. In 4 years' time, they will lose about 750 of their approximately 1,000 devices! Considering that so many of their educational resources are now digital I think it is important we reinstate a refresh cycle now to get ahead of this. An 8-year refresh cycle would cost about $40,000 per year, but we may initially need to purchase slightly more to account for the fact that we haven’t been upgrading them for the last few years. Devices that we replace now and are still serviceable can be used as fill-in devices for grades 5-12 as devices are lost/broken in those grades.
On the applications front, WCC is now using our digital check-in/check-out system full-time at both locations, and in April, we’ll be issuing our first invoices from it. Feedback so far has been positive, it should save a lot of time in paperwork going forwards, and give parents more clarity of their use of the service. In Sips we’ve been expanding our data dashboards, we’re doing more to help track the high school MTSS process (GRIT check-ins and support meetings), and we’re improving reporting for TEAM. For KWRL, we’ve improved the reporting on how the shop techs' time is divided between their various duties.