Consultants find school system has ‘robust network’
By David GoodwinThe computers used by students and faculty in Elmore County public schools are part of an impressive, “robust network,” the school board’s technology consultants said Tuesday.
During a work session of the Elmore County Board of Education, board members heard the results of a technology assessment performed by Inspired Technologies, a Tallahassee, Fla., firm with offices in Auburn.
“By what we’ve seen,” consultant Wendell Humphries said in praise of the school’s computer net, “there’s no reason to invest in network upgrades.”
In the 2007 fiscal year, the Inspired consultants calculated the board spent around $178 per student to implement the network, which is “on par, based on our research, for the class of network you put in play.”
Most of the problems Humphries and Inspired Technologies CEO Phillip Shoemaker cited in the report were of a bureaucratic nature.
In interviews with school principals, campus technology coordinators, the county technology staff and school board chief financial officer Vicki Owen, Humphries found that many campus tech coordinators had varying skill-sets and “were often wearing too many hats.”
“You’re asking technology coordinators to perform tasks for which they aren’t trained,” Humphries said. Most of the school system’s tech coordinators also teach classes, which forces them to choose between teaching their classes or repairing the day’s computer problems.
And when tech coordinators sent an SOS to the county technology staff, their problems was only addressed on a “rotating technology schedule.” So, for example, if a classroom machine crashed at Wetumpka High School on Thursday, but the tech staff had been there Wednesday, that computer would be out of service until the next tech-staff visit Wednesday.
Humphries recommended the board hire dedicated technology coordinators, who aren’t burdened by classroom duties, for each of Elmore County’s 15 campuses.
He also recommended the creation of three committees to oversee the operation of the school board’s high-tech infrastructure. One committee would be charged with preparing a technology plan to share hardware and software prudently and equitably across the system.
An Awareness Committee would be charged with ensuring every teacher and administrator could easily discover what technology options are available. And a Disaster Recovery committee, made up of “someone who asks a lot of questions,” would be tasked with creating a response plan should the network experience a campus- or system-wide meltdown.
Humphries also noted a vulnerability discovered by his resident hacker, “one of the smartest guys in the southeast,” who needed only “10 or 15 minutes” to break into the system’s network. Once in, he had access to students’ grades, personal information and other off-limits data.
That’s not as worrying as it sounds though, Shoemaker said, because “in every network there’s a way to break in.” And on the bright side, one had to already be inside the network ” using a school board computer, rather than breaking in remotely ” to exploit the vunerability.
But it’s important to close those holes, as the system technology office immediately did, because “there are some creative, smart 16-year-olds out there.”
“They will embarass the heck out of a school if you leave them an opening,” Shoemaker said.
The full 28-page report is available for the public to view at the Board of Education central office in Wetumpka.
nFormer MeMa’s owner Brenda Moseley was the final applicant to interview with the school board for Eclectic’s vacant District 7 board position.
Moseley was the last of six applicant for the seat, which was vacated when Johnny Carothers moved out of the district.
The other applicants were John Costello, Joey Holley, Greg Atkinson, James Singleton and Warren Aaron.
Each applicant stated his or her goals for the position, and the major issues he or she felt affected the county and the Eclectic community itself. Moseley answer roughly similar questions asked of her fellow applicants at a work session in July.
Board members are expected to choose their new District 7 colleague at the Aug. 19 regular meeting.
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