[geeks] Thoughts on IT work in public schools?

[Dan Sikorski]

Ive worked with a couple public school systems and private high schools as a
consultant.  The below might slightly overstate how bad it is, but not by a
whole lot.  Just like business, some school systems are better for IT than
others, even the best Ive seen it just OK.  The worst I saw was actually a
private high school, religiously affiliated, that never bought new hardware.
Everything they had for servers and networking was old retired equipment from
a nearby college.  The admin there could barely do more than put out fires.

In better circumstances, there was competent funding and management, but there
was not much interesting work as far as I could tell.

Boy, IT at public schools is so bad that even threads about on a normally
civilized list are top-posted!

	-Dan Sikorski

On Apr 16, 2014, at 1:06 PM, hike <mh1272 at gmail.com> wrote:

> IT is a commodity at public schools.
> IT does not pay well at public schools.
> IT is poorly equipped at public schools.  (Yes, less than business.)
> IT people are not as high on the status totem pole as teachers.  (No entry
> to teacherbs lounge, etc.band teachers are pretty low on the totem pole.)
> IT is electronic waste management.  An IT person is an b
electronic
> janitorb

> as one EE/UNIX sysadmin told me.  After working in IT for decades, I agree.
> Schools treat their janitor like crap.
> IT does not get all the down time (vacation, holidays, summers) that
> teachers get.
>
> Everybody is an expert in IT.  The wannabes will let you know that they
> know more than you.
>
> I guess I think itbs a bad deal.
> College level may be better.  My friends who did college preferred it to
> K12.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 11:15 AM, Nick B <nick at pelagiris.org> wrote:
>
>> k-12 - I can't decide between "Abandon hope all ye who enter here" and
>> "Work makes you free".
>> College - No experience, but I've heard good things a bout the environment
>> from coworkers.
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Nathan Raymond <nraymond at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Anyone with any experience working IT in public education?  I'm
>>> contemplating it as a future career move, and I'd love to know more from
>>> people's first-hand experiences.  This job would be managing the
>>> infrastructure to four grammar/middle schools and a high school.
>>>
>>> While I've done work in private education (my first paid job was IT work
>>> for the prep school I went to many moons ago, and I did VAX and UNIX
>> admin
>>> work on the side during my computer science undergrad years, and I've
>> done
>>> some IT consulting for a few private schools recently), I have not dealt
>>> first hand with a public school (and never went to one, either).  I'd
>>> expect there to be a lot of politics, and potential budget issues.  I
>> know
>>> they tend to have unions as well.  Anything else I should be aware of, or
>>> to look for?
>>>
>>> - Nate
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