Tech people

Some of you may have heard me speak at a joint subcommittee meeting about technology. My kindergartener wanted to know when "the computer lady" was going to come back to her classroom to put the math games on the computer the teacher had been talking about. When I told her that I didn't know, that there was only one computer lady for the city, she asked why. And then she answered her own question: "Momma, if they don't have enough money, they could have some of my money to get another computer lady to put math games on our computer!"

So I thought I'd look into just what all the other IT people who work for the district are doing, since her piggy bank isn't quite that big. Here's what I found out:

• An information technology officer is in charge of all IT for the district. This is no longer a position that reports directly to the superintendent (it reports to the CFO). In essence, this person makes sure that everyone else on here is doing what they are supposed to, and that the 6000 computers, a cable station, data networks, an email system, and a website that WPS maintains stays up and running.
• Educational access channel producer: the person who does Channel 11
• 2 School year production assistants who run the cameras for all that goes up on Channel 11.
• A network administrator who maintains, yes, the networks: a Wide Area Network (WAN), more than one Local Area Network (LAN), domain controllers, an email server (the district runs its own), and all network hardware.
• A network integrator who assists the above and runs the anti-virus programs and Windows updates.
• Lead computer technician and 7 computer technicians who maintain those 6000 computers, and all the associated hardware: printers, interactive whiteboards, etc.
• Student database administrator, who keeps track of the 23,000 students and their associated information
• Student database software developer writes the code that runs the student database
• Student database trainer makes sure that everyone who needs to know how to enter information into the student database knows how to do so. This is also the person who prints report cards and maintains Connect-Ed (the call system).
• Technical support specialist specifically supports the administrative computers
• School based technologist maintains the NovaNet system and tracks MCAS and MAP testing scores.
• A half-time web apps and data analyst, who is moving us to more web-based systems (for example, right now, we're moving secondary grading to an online form rather than the current floppy disk/USB drive system).
• A webmaster

What do all of you techies, in particular, think? Balanced use of manpower or not?