IT Meetup: Operational Readiness and Strong Starts

Hello, everybody.

Okay, I think we're getting ready to start, I think, as everyone's joining.

So, hello, everyone.

I just wanted to take a moment before we start the program to welcome you.

My name is Kristin Dietz.

I am the president and CEO of ATLAS.

For those of you that may be coming here again, which we hope to welcome you back, I am the new president and CEO.

I just started in June, and I'm thrilled to be here today to kick off today's IT meeting on stabilizing IT operations at the start of the school year.

And, as someone just mentioned, too, I know it's a busy time for you all, so we really appreciate you guys getting together and having this conversation.

The start of the school year is definitely one of the most demanding for tech teams.

And today, we are all about comparing the opening of school challenges, sharing practical strategies, and of course, leaning on one another so that you can support your staff.

And before I turn things over, I just wanted to do a huge thank you to our sponsor, METER, for supporting the community, and obviously making sessions like this possible.

And now, I'm also excited to pass over the mic to our lead facilitator, Barbara Cowan.

We appreciate Barbara joining as the Chief Information and Innovation Officer at, and I'm probably going to-- Brandeis Marin.

I don't know if I said that right.

But we really appreciate you guys, you coming and everyone being here, and I hope you all enjoy the discussion.

So welcome, and I'll turn it over to Barbara.

Hi, everybody.

We were very close, Kristin.

It's Brandeis Marin.

Marin County.

It's just north of San Francisco.

Super close.

And just to let you all know, I do have a little bit of a cough still happening, so if you see me muting it may be to be coughing so I don't cough in all of your ears.

Got that late summer cold that I think a lot of us get from working so hard.

First of all, welcome and congratulations.

I think you probably all have mastered the topic of this webinar this morning because you had enough time to take an hour away from your big to-do list to join in this conversation.

I don't know about you, but this is a really busy day here at Brandeis.

And we're on the West Coast, so it's still only 11 o'clock, but a lot of you are at the end of your school days.

So, thank you for joining us.

I'm hoping that we can cover a lot of ground together today.

This discussion's really going to focus on the realities that all of us in tech departments, IT departments, ed tech folks face during these crazy opening weeks of school.

Our teachers have been back, this is their third or fourth day back.

They came back last Thursday.

So I'll talk a little bit more about what's going on at my school, and I hope you'll all share what's going on at yours.

Our goal for this webinar is to really share practical strategies.

The more practical this could be, the better.

A little venting wouldn't be the worst thing in the world either.

But also, how do we stabilize operations during this busy time when the demand is so high, and how do we support our teams, both our technology teams and the teaching team? This is a peer conversation.

I don't know any more than any of you.

The smartest person in the room is the room, so let's all please contribute questions, examples, approaches, things that are working at your school.

And we can also use the chat if you prefer not to speak over mic.

And just a quick reminder that we're going to avoid sharing confidential information or sensitive security details about your school or your tech stack or information that could identify any individual students or employees.

So, we're a small enough group.

There's, I see 14 of us.

Could we all just go around the room, and if you wouldn't mind just telling us your name, the school you work for, maybe, and where that is, what your role is, and one short word or phrase describing how you're doing here on August 18th.

So I'm going to go based on the order that I see everybody.

Kristin and I have already introduced ourselves.

Why don't we have my friend from Alta Vista School go next? Hi, I'm Shana Crollman.

I'm at Alta Vista School.

We're a JK to eight in San Francisco.

And clearly my brain's not working.

One word? Chaos.

That's where I am right now.

Today's day one for kids, too, so chaos.

Oh, perfect, Shana.

Thank you.

And by the way, my sister works with Shana at her school.

So she's the school counselor at Shana's school.

All right, next we have Lori.

You're muted, Lori.

Sorry.

She's working on it.

Well, have you worked on it? Sorry.

Why don't we-- Oh, there you go.

Great.

All right.

That was a little bit easier.

So my name's Lori Marion, and I was, for eight years, the director of technology at the Friends School of Atlanta.

And in 2024, at the end of that school year, we were downsized, so that there is no director of technology at the Friends School now.

And I pivoted to doing communications for a county commissioner for about a year, and now I'm still looking for opportunities still in the IT sector if I can, and just wanted to-- So that's where I am.

Thank you.

And you're still physically, probably in that back to school mode.

It's hard to quit.

Oh, yeah.

I just know that every August I have that feeling, whether I'm at a school or not.

All right, Ted, let's have you go next.

And it looks like you're muted.

Maybe we can go to Steve and then come back to Ted, see if he can figure that out.

All right, there we go, Steve.

Hi.

Steve Johnson, director of tech here at the River Oaks Baptist School in Houston, Texas.

We are pre-K eight, and first day is tomorrow.

So my word is cautious.

Cautious.

Maybe we'll hear more about that.

Thank you.

All right, Ted, did we figure out your muting situation? No.

Okay, you can put it in the chat too.

If anybody else who doesn't want to speak, you can also stick it in the chat.

Barry, well, you're up next.

Sure.

I'll go.

So I just left a career as CIO at Hathaway Brown School in Cleveland, Ohio.

So I joined the association world, but to me, I saw this and I was like, "I need to listen to this conversation because I'm just starting this new job, and it is chaos and just figuring things out." And I feel from all of you what this week and these next two weeks mean.

So it feels good to be a part of this group.

Great.

You don't have an opinion here, Barry.

Get out.

I know.

Oh, he's got years of opinions and years of Augusts under his belt.

Yes.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

Alex, you're up next.

Alex Puchalski, CTO at Trinity Prep.

We're actually a week into the school year and in the middle of a severe weather hold, so it's already fun and games.

Excellent.

Sorry about that.

Okay.

Ooh, that sounds tough.

All right, Bill, you're up next.

So I'm Bill Stites.

I'm the Director of Technology at Montclair Kimberley Academy.

We thankfully still have a few more weeks before we're getting started, but we just literally just walked out of onboarding all of our new high school students, process that we do each and every year, followed next week by three days of what we call New Teacher Institute.

So we bring all of our teachers in for three days, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, before everyone comes back the following week.

So while one may think we still have time to get stuff done, school has definitely gotten started even though we don't officially have the doors open and things going as of yet.

What a gift for your teachers to have that time together, too.

That's great.

Okay, Perry, are you able to unmute? Yes.

My name is Perry.

I work with Barbara.

I deal with the database mostly, but a lot of everything else as well in IT.

And it has been busy.

Very busy.

Literally couldn't do it without Perry.

All right, Vinnie, you're up next.

I'm Vinnie Vrotny, the Director of Innovation and Technology at the Kinkaid School in Houston, Texas.

Like Steve, our students arrive tomorrow, although we've had students on campus with orientation this week.

Great.

Good luck with that.

All right.

Patrick.

Hey.

I'm Patrick Brackett.

I'm the Director of Technology with Asheville School in Asheville, North Carolina.

We are having our first week of students this week, and last week was actually my first week in this position, so my word is overwhelmed.

So that's where I'm living right now.

First week at a school ever? Yeah.

Oh, boy.

Welcome.

First week at this school.

Yep.

You're in the right place, and I will just tell you a little hint that I'm facilitating this conversation, but this room is full of some very experienced senior folks who really you should listen to what they say because there's- Excellent ...

a lot of experience in this Zoom room right now.

Terrific.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Thank you.

And we love the noobs, too.

We have so much to learn from you because you've got fresh eyes.

You're not stuck and bitter like some of us.

Well, hopefully.

All right.

Eric, you're up next.

Hi, I'm Eric Smith.

I'm Director of Technology at the Woods Academy.

We're a pre-K through eighth-grade school.

Our new teachers started yesterday.

Our other staff are coming back on Thursday, and students come back in a week and a half, so I'm feeling pretty calm right now.

So that'll probably change here probably on Thursday.

Calm.

That is a word I did not expect to hear, but that's wonderful.

That's fantastic.

And then Lizzie and Amanda, you may have missed the introduction.

We're just going around saying our name, our school, our role, and one short word or phrase describing how it's going for you today.

So Lizzie, why don't we have you go next? Sure.

Hi, everybody, I'm Lizzie Laidlaw.

I'm the director of technology at Marin Country Day School in the San Francisco area.

And today is our first day with all faculty back, so it is very busy, which is why I'm off camera.

Got you.

And then maybe we'll do Amanda and try Ted one more time.

Sure.

I'm Amanda Burdine.

I'm with Richmond Montessori School in Richmond, Virginia.

Our new faculty start tomorrow, and our existing faculty start on Thursday.

I've been here, this is my sixth year now, and I'm freaking out, but that's okay.

And let's try Ted.

All right.

Can you guys hear me now? I'm having all kinds of technical glitches, so I had to reboot.

My name's Ted Landgraf.

I'm from Punahou School.

We're a K12 independent school in Honolulu, Hawaii.

And I would say one word to describe, it would be busy.

We started school last year, so a lot of things coming in.

Well, welcome back to all of you, and thank you for those introductions.

And we have a big range geographically, school size, when we start, et cetera, but there's a lot of evergreen things.

I didn't get to say mine.

Mine is that we actually physically are in a building that turns the whole building over to a summer camp that just ended last week.

So we literally move 100% of the stuff out of every classroom every June, and then move it back in every August.

So we just did the turnover a few days ago, right as teachers were returning.

So that's the big shuffle.

So I would say scrambled would be maybe my word.

So, thank you, and welcome to all of you.

And I think I'm just going to put it out there.

I think we're small enough that we don't need to raise hands unless we start interrupting each other, but we can also put answers in the chat.

So the first question for the group is, what issues consistently surface during these opening weeks of school? What are the evergreen things you deal with every single August? Or if it's your very first year, in Patrick's instance, what's something you're noticing has surfaced that took you by surprise? So again, consistently issuing, consistently sur- I can go here.

For me, it's printers.

Like you, Barbara, we are summer camp in the summer, so everything gets unplugged and everything gets moved, and people are like, "I don't need this access point.

I don't know what this is.

Why isn't my Wi-Fi working?" So they just start unplugging stuff.

And it's inevitably the printers.

Every classroom has a printer, and yeah.

So that's what our big issue is.

So I try to go around and get all those done before the teachers come back, but I haven't had a chance to do that this year, so yeah.

Yeah.

And I saw Steve added sort of to that, phones as well.

I would add on top of that remotes.

We've started labeling and collecting remotes, but that doesn't mean that there isn't always one or two missing.

We ask teachers to put them in a good place, and then they don't remember where they put them, so we started collecting them, and then inevitably there's always one or two missing.

But yeah, I hear you.

A printer in every classroom.

That sounds wonderful for the teachers when it's working.

Like a lot of work for you.

Yeah, it's- Anybody else? Yeah, that's a lot ...

not fun.

Yeah.

That's a lot.

I'm going to look in here.

Just the huge amount of support tickets that come into the IT office.

Can you just give me a hand raise if you use ticketing software for tech support requests? We can physically raise or you can virtually raise.

Okay, great.

And is the ticketing system something that is largely in use this time of year, or is that an all time of year? For us, we use Zendesk, but really this is the time of year we lean on the tickets most heavily during the school year.

People mostly reach out to us via email and other means, but it's our only way to keep track of everything.

Anyone want to give a shout-out to their ticketing system or how they have things set up, and how they keep on top of the sheer number of tickets? We just swapped to Incident IQ and have been having a great time.

So, but I was coming from a- What's the improvement? We were using an MSP based program, trying to make it conform to our will, and just the simple fact of people being able to log in and click on things and make tickets, and then tie it back to the people and the hardware without six or seven extra clicks has been tremendous.

So it's Incident IQ.

Great.

So Alex- Other thoughts about staying on top of those tech requests? Alex, I would love to chat with you about that.

We went down that road and then abandoned it with them, and we ended up going with Manage121.

Yeah.

The one thing I found with ticketing systems is that they're not all designed for schools- Yeah ...

and therefore, there's a lot of different issues.

And Incident IQ seemed to be one that was that way, and then we ran it.

So I'll chat offline with you about it, but- Yeah.

No, again, I'm coming from literally the Kaseya world- Yeah ...

where we were using their Vorex product that was built for MSPs, because I had this grandiose scheme and idea that I could actually build out sort of an MSP type system that would be easily replicable for- ...

a nice big software company to sell to schools.

And although their training department loved every single thing that we said and actually adapted to our needs, the implementation teams, because they just saw dollar signs at the end, kept ignoring all of our requests for improvement.

So at this point, just to go back to something that I could actually tie a ticket to a user to a thing was just Again, automatically was just a miracle.

Yeah, that's great.

And I think it'd be really easy for us to go down the vendor rabbit hole of which- Yeah Yeah ...

product software, which features, but I think you just nailed it at the end there, Alex, saying if the request can be tied to the person, that can be tied to the device.

That to me is the holy grail.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Bill, were you going to say something else? One thing that I- Oh ...

I was surprised...

Oh, sorry if I'm jumping on someone.

Go ahead.

No, Steve, go.

I was surprised at the return on investment for a half an hour spent in the morning looking at tickets, categorizing and assigning, since we don't have an automated feature for that, and then a half an hour at the end of the day doing that.

By the end of the day, I mean, like 8 or 9 o'clock at night.

The team has been very diligent about following up.

No one complained about having things assigned to them, and it really helped us stay on top of things that would've very easily slipped between the cracks, because our faculty, like all faculty, stop us in the hallway.

And we love them.

Yeah.

We want to love them.

So, but- I literally say at a faculty meeting every year, this year, no tech requests can be made through the bathroom door.

If you see me going to the restroom, that is- ...

off limits, number one.

And, number two, I think it's not just slipping through the cracks.

I think it's over-functioning.

Three people working on one ticket, and then there's a bunch that aren't being addressed.

So having a way to, as I refer to it, calling the ball, who's got this and that.

Morning and afternoon cleanup and assignment and delegation was brilliant, Steve.

Love it.

Other thoughts about tickets and managing just the big workflow there? We've been...

A ticketing system was new.

I am just starting my third year, and the very first thing I did was put a ticketing system in place.

But I think that one of the things I appreciated that we did this year that I thought we got a lot of use out of was we created some drop-in time.

We're a small team, just two people and two campuses, so we created a block of drop-in time at each campus where we actually were pretty consistently busy getting the really easy things out of the way.

The reinstall the printer, fix my email handlers, those kinds of things that I think we would've gotten bogged down in those tickets.

But we were able to, in a matter of three hours, take care of 20 people while we were sitting there doing something else while we waited for the next person.

Trying to get some of those really quick things out of the way, and specifically anything that was going to take more than five minutes, send a ticket for that and we'll come back to that, is how we did that.

Excellent.

Lizzie, you've had your hand up.

Sorry, that was left up from before.

Sorry.

Oh, okay.

Great.

So yeah, there's nothing like a great tool and using the tool and teaching your end users to use the tool.

But would you say that the big set of tasks, or the overwhelm with the tasks is primarily a staffing issue or a timing issue, or is it communication or procedural related? Is there any way around that this is just crazy in August? And the best ticketing system isn't going to fix the fact that there's six printers that Amanda's dealing with, or that the person had the last minute software request that wasn't budgeted for that was mentioned in the chat.

So ticketing systems aside, are there challenges beyond just it's busy in August that any of you can identify that maybe make this so particularly cuckoo this time of year? Just to go back to that, I think it was Lizzie's last-minute software request.

Yeah, that's a really tricky one.

Your budget's probably done in the late winter, early spring, and the software budget is the software budget.

And then if something big comes along, who gets to make that approval? What do you all do with last minute requests for hardware or software that come in over the summer? Or something broke and you didn't know about it until now and now school's starting.

Like for example, we just moved back in from camp and all the TVs went back in the rooms and one of them won't turn on, and I didn't budget for having to replace that one.

So now I've got to figure out how to budget for that.

How do you prevent that or get out in front of it or respond when it does happen, because it will happen? I hold back part of my piecemeal budget for miscellaneous expenditures for the start of school craziness.

Yeah.

I do use the poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine for the people who didn't order software, because that's now a nice to have.

We do a modified priority system of if it's for the first two weeks of school, the only things we're doing is fixing broken things.

If somebody has a new request or something that they really, really want- Yeah ...

that's nice.

If it wasn't part of the you are a new teacher in a new room or a room got moved around, then it has nothing to do with the start of school and everybody has a functioning projector, a functioning laptop, the speaker in the room, and everybody's account's working.

That's the priority for the first two weeks.

Everything else we get to is gravy, and it's taken a couple years, but- People have responded to that overall.

They get there.

There's still the, "Oh, but it'd be really nice if I had this for this day." Okay, we'll see if we can make it work.

And then if we do, it's like Star Trek, under promise, over deliver.

Anyone want to add to that? See.

Are there any recurring problems that you're dealing with right now that could've been prevented? I think, Barbara, you kind of referenced how you have to move everything out at the beginning of summer, move back in.

I feel like so many of the challenges arise, like the IT team, we would put all of our plans into place, map everything out.

It was all that other stuff outside of our control, where people are coming back in, they maybe didn't read the emails in June, and so now August, there's issues.

So it's no matter how much we planned and tried to be proactive, we just had to shift to this completely reactive mindset.

And so over the past handful of years, we really just shifted to this idea that as soon as new employees come into the building, all of our projects have to be done out of the way.

We cannot be doing anything for ourselves at that point, and we just try to map out our work to align with that.

You really nailed it, Barry.

I say every year, this particular week and last week and probably next week as well, my to-do list is irrelevant.

It's everybody else's to-do list becomes my to-do list.

And then they get quiet again a couple weeks into the school year, and then I get a little time back.

And anything I didn't get to, we call that a summer project for next summer or whenever the time magically materializes.

And I love my summer to-do list, crossing everything out and making it red and seeing that go, but there's always the few lingering things at the end there that are very, very frustrating.

Are there any things that have caught your team by surprise or that are creating tremendous pressure right now that haven't already been brought up? The printer one is really stressing me out for you, Amanda.

Yeah, it's a lot.

The other thing, I put in the chat, I'm a team of one, so all of the things fall, and I'm sure a lot of you can relate to that.

So for me, it's the last-minute uploads to our syncing programs, so things like ParentSquare and Raptor emergency alerts.

And then we have these last-minute enrollments, or we have these last-minute hires, so then I have to re-sync everything, so I can't sync until the last second.

And then people are like, "Why can't I send out my ParentSquare communications?" Because we're still enrolling students, and we're still getting parents, all of the things.

So for me, that's a lot of pressure in addition to setting up all the new equipment for the new employees that start tomorrow.

So it's all of the things.

I don't even know.

I feel like I look like Einstein.

My hair is crazy.

It's like all the things.

Yeah.

When we rolled out Clever, and it certainly could've been ClassLink or any other syncing tool, as opposed to doing the separate sync or the manual sync or the uploaded CSV files for each and every tool.

That was a huge game changer.

Are all of you using tools that sync your data and make everything sync on an ongoing basis? Billy, you seem like for some things.

Steve, you're nodding.

I would love to use Clever.

I just haven't had a chance to sit down and dig into it.

You guys know what that's like.

So, yeah.

I want to use Clever really badly.

It will save you a lot of time.

Indeed, it will.

All right, let's shift the focus a little bit, and I was just talking about this with a particular friend who's back from her rested summer vacation.

And there's always the feeling of, you really nailed it with the whole your last-minute request is not my emergency.

But I think there's also not sometimes a realization of my one thing that feels urgent to me is actually one drop in the bucket for the larger tech department's needs, and getting teachers to understand it will be done.

We may do triage right now.

We may give you a for-right-now solution as we work toward a longer solution.

But my question really is about how to discern, how to distinguish between what is a true emergency versus what we could just call urgent noise.

So I've got a lot of urgent noise in my ticketing system, and we'll get to all of them, but there are some things, like that TV, that does not work, and we need to replace it.

How do you discern and distinguish and communicate about the difference between those when everybody feels that their thing is urgent and needs to be done for the first day of school? I had a team meeting where we set some priorities together.

So tech team meeting, the priorities that we set were the things that impact instruction.

And as a former teacher talking to technicians, I was able to say that, and also married to a kindergarten teacher who was printing and laminating, that our getting their printers and phones ready a week before school started was because they needed to print materials, and they needed to call parents To be able to introduce themselves.

And it wasn't something that's not classroom instruction, but that was the kind of thing that it helped my team understand just a little bit better why phones matter two weeks before school starts, or a week, or even three days, which we're still doing.

I think- Anybody...

Yeah, go ahead.

Sorry.

Go ahead, Michelle.

I think I look at that similar too, and I've also been a classroom teacher, and so I was like anything that prevents someone from being able to teach their class on their first day, from having the things that they need, those are higher priority.

If I know you're not launching that software for the first two weeks, that is actually not at the top of the list.

And if you didn't request it in June when I asked you to and you requested it the day before you need it, that does not move it to the top of the list.

And I have that conversation with all of our faculty as well as far as, this is what is actually an emergency on our end, and what is preventing instruction is very high up on the list.

I think it's important to think about level setting and expectations, because you also have to consider your staff's morale and mental ability to get through all of this stuff.

Because people can't assume that when they come in that nothing is going on and everyone's now getting back to things, and there aren't eight other projects.

We still have construction that is kind of coming to a close.

We're doing the things that we need to do that we've had on our lists, and that I agree, the hindrances to instruction are important to get out of the way because that's why we're all here.

But I think as you were just saying, the clear communication to faculty needs to be out there, and you need to have the support from your heads of campus, your head of school, whoever you report directly to, because they're the ones that are going to hear if people think you're not getting it done, and everyone needs to be on the same page, and that's the ongoing struggle, I think, year to year.

Yeah.

And clear communication and administrative support are key to that.

Morale was mentioned.

Specifically I think a lot of us are directors of technology and manage staffs.

Some of us are departments of one.

But how do you keep your help desk folks and troubleshooting team and yourself from...

How do you manage the stress when it feels like it's such a grind for this period of time? So I would go to Costco every other week and buy their big bags of chocolate.

Truly.

We would have a drawer of chocolate in the IT hub that our people would always go to.

Just the little small things made a big difference.

Alex, were you going to say something? Yeah.

I have a Dunkin and a Starbucks less than two-tenths of a mile from campus.

So it's drink runs, and then I had a barbecue for everybody just before we started school at my house.

And then it's the when you get upset, you come to my office, we close the door.

This is your safe space.

You can yell about whoever you need to yell about, and then you'll leave, and we'll be back to normal.

So in some cases, just knowing that they have that is useful.

But I have had almost every single one of my staff members come in at some point in time and go, "Can I just talk about..." Just close the door.

We'll get through this, and doesn't matter if it's me, if it's whatever, we'll breathe, and then we'll finish, and then it's like, "Okay.

Let's keep going.

We got this," or, "It's time to go home or do whatever." So.

The other thing I do is I try to tell my staff, let me be the one to say no.

Yeah.

Because it keeps them in a positive position with the people that they're working with on the day-to-day, because realistically, they're dealing with it from a frontline perspective more so than I am.

I hear about things after the fact, but it's like, if you're not sure, send them to me.

I'll answer it, not because you can't, but because I want you to be seen as an enabler.

Let me be the bad guy when that needs to happen, or say, "We hear what you're saying, but you're going to have to wait until X, Y, or Z." They can complain about me.

Let them have positive feelings about the people that are dealing with things on the day-to-day.

That's all about boundaries, Bill.

That's really true.

Sometimes you have to run interference for your team if they're being over-requested.

This sort of brings up another topic, which is if a request needs to be escalated, who has the authority to do that? Is that you? Is it that your administrator? Is that folks on your team? Who gets to define what needs to take priority and jump the line per se? In my school, if it's tech-related, it's typically me.

Perry will come to me and say, "Hey, is it okay if I shift away from this because I really have to focus on that?" And almost all the time, the answer is, of course, yes, because he's got the big sense of it all.

And then sometimes teachers need to be- ...

told this is not our priority right now.

We're working on this and this, and this is why, and this is when.

Lizzie, I love the unplugging the internet on a 30-acre campus.

It's true.

Once the whole internet goes down, everything else seems like a small problem.

Thank you for sharing that story.

All right.

So let's talk about, most of you agreed that a classroom teacher not being able to teach, you drop everything for that.

But sometimes, let's say you had a situation where a classroom display isn't working, and class is about to start, but then you have a group of new students who can't access the new learning management system to see their homework or do the work for class.

And you're alone in the office, and they both come in at the same time.

How do decisions get made about prioritizing those two examples? Okay.

We can skip that one.

I have another question.

I've got lots of questions.

Maybe this one will resonate a little bit more.

Is anyone rolling out a new system or a platform or initiative that's tech related this fall? And can you talk a little bit about your thinking about late summer, early fall rollouts and how to make that go well? Again, I'm happy to give an example.

Our parents, after nudging me for a long time, we are rolling out a parent communication platform using Slack, which I wasn't sure I wanted to do, but they wore me down, and we've got it ready.

And I was very clear about boundaries of, here's what I will do for you and here's what I won't.

And they're now needing this Slack to launch today, but the two people who are in charge are both out of the country, and now all of a sudden back on my plate.

So I'm reminding them about we want a good rollout, but we want it to be a parent rollout, not a me rollout.

So we're going to just have to wait till they're back in the country.

Any other examples about thinking about rollout? We're launching a new classroom.

Actually, it's not new to them.

It's a fuller implementation of classroom management and student device filter software.

This one's called LightSpeed.

They launched last year and didn't fully implement, and it gave people a bad impression of it, so we're giving it one more try, but investing in implementing with fidelity.

And so I just got a text and disappeared from the call because we're going through settings updates ready for tomorrow's devices being turned on.

So yeah, that's one.

But it has a benefit that's pretty clear to everyone, which is being able to see what students are doing on their devices, and the tech team are able to understand the seriousness of that and how that can help our jobs anywhere down the road.

We're doing something similar with Securly, which is interesting in that the filters are much more granular than what we had previously.

But the choices that have been made, not by me, and this is something I was very clear about when we kind of came together and had this conversation with our admin teams, and they looked at what those categories were, and we took almost an hour and a half and talked through what all of that meant across three campuses, what was going to be turned on, turned off, what it was going to look like inside and outside of school.

It's dealing with all the things that are now getting caught that might need to still go through, and then how do we deal with that? And then how are we explaining certain things? Because in a lot of cases, it's a much more stricter policy than what we've dealt with.

And then that's just internally.

To what you were saying, Steve, is that we were going to roll something out in the spring leading up to it.

There were some technical issues, so we pulled back on it so that we didn't have a bad rollout.

And then we need to roll that out to parents, and that's going to be another piece altogether.

The only benefit that we can see with Securly is that all of the help desk tickets go to Securly directly.

They do not come to the school, which was something that I was insistent upon because I am not troubleshooting 800-plus parents within the school with over 1,000 students in terms of how to make this work, so...

Thanks for that example.

I think conventional wisdom always says that you want to roll things out for the start of the school year.

But is that always the best way? Are there certain rollouts that could wait till mid-year or not this time of year? It is just so crazy, and just getting an ordinary year up and running is juggling, spinning so many plates.

Is it also a good time to introduce the community to a new platform or system or way of logging in or way of getting information? I don't know.

Anybody have thinking about, yeah, it has to be in the fall versus it could wait till another time of year? I think sometimes those August rollouts are tricky when they rely on everyone's so splintered over the summer.

I feel like our admins are all over the place, and so it really can be hard to do that.

Now, if you had done your work in the spring and could almost get everything ready And then, by the time everyone walks away in June, but you flip the switch in August, that's okay.

But there were a number of things we just knew we couldn't do in the summer because just no one's around.

So we tried to get it up and running in the spring, and then official rollout at the start of school.

And that always worked for us.

For me, it's always been about how much training is involved.

I used to have a division head who said, "You get one change with faculty a year from a technology perspective.

So pick and choose lightly, especially at the beginning of the year when everything else is in flux." I've found over time, we've been very successful in what I'll call wholesale infrastructure changes when we're coming back at the beginning of a school year and the entire X has changed.

So we spent a summer where we redid all of our copiers and printers, and everybody left at the end of the school year.

We ripped everything out, we put everything new in, we tested it left and right.

Everybody came back.

We did three trainings, and the only thing that happened after that was we ran out of ink faster than we expected.

And it was, how do we replenish it quicker, because that wasn't part of what we had thought through.

So things of that nature work, to me, much better than the new software that require everybody at their varying levels of capabilities to be able to sit there and go, "Well, these are the six settings you need to do, and you might not want these for..." You know what? Let's roll that out October, November when we can get to everybody through extra in-service and all the other pieces.

We did our new copiers last spring, and it was great.

It just so worked out that pushing all the new drivers went very smoothly.

But I'm trying to picture on top of everything to get ready for the school year, getting everybody's new printer drivers installed and working correctly and all the little troubleshooting we have to do right now.

One system, one printer driver.

Oh, there you go.

So, one printer driver, key carded system.

There's 20 printers on campus, everybody else goes to a copier.

So there's no flakiness, no anything else.

Everybody got one new driver, and that was it.

And now wherever they walk on campus, they can get their printout.

So that was a big win from that perspective.

Congratulations.

Let's talk about data again for a second.

We talked a little while ago about things like Clever and uploading those lists and doing those initial syncs.

But there's a lot of last-minute changes.

Somebody mentioned last-minute enrollees or staffing changes.

We deal with a lot of last-minute changes to the schedule.

Yesterday was the Hunger Games version of everybody signing up for their duties, which all need to be entered into the calendar.

How do you best deal with all what may be somewhat manual processes, or like the little flotsam and jetsam, extra student here, person left there.

How do you capture all of those extra things that if they had all been done in June, it would be a single process, but changing the rosters for class enrollees or everything else.

How do you stay on top of all of that? Not so-- In a so-so way, Steve, is that what that hand is? Anybody else want to weigh in on that? We just-- Yeah, go ahead.

No, I was going to let you go first this time.

I just think we have too many manual processes where somebody sends an email when there's a new student enrolled, or if the schedule changes, it got changed in a spreadsheet, but not in the master schedule.

And we don't have the good flow of communication about changes.

We've been building out in our project management systems checklists, and we are building a checklist for just about everything.

And we have made it so that our whole rollover process from year to year is a checklist.

Our whole turning every student on for our systems and getting them enrolled and get their email account set up and email the other is a checklist.

The onboarding process for every new employee has a template and a checklist, and it's tracked in our system.

Our team can go through it.

Anybody can check off a box as they need it, and we're getting better at finishing it in a reasonable timeframe.

Sometimes we're still doing it and then going back way after the fact to check it off, but we know it's on the checklist and it has to get done.

So as a school, my predecessor had invested in Asana.

And we just switched from Asana to Basecamp, and are now using that left and right for both academic, for kids, for classes, and for faculty and staff.

And it's a great little, you've got a project you're working on.

You need to chat.

You need to put files together, and boom, everything's in the same spot.

You can create a checklist, click, click, click, click, click, click, done.

Archive it when everybody's onboarded.

And we did 16 people, and I've never had better accuracy about who was onboarded and where everybody was in the process.

Kind of a side thing about onboarding new people.

Do new employees not get their devices or accounts until the day they start, or can they get access to school property or accounts prior to their employment agreement? We do it the day that they start, because we've had so many who, even though they've gone through the entire process, just don't show up.

So I don't give them anything until the first day of school.

I have this fight with my HR person every year.

I want to give stuff to them as soon as, what I say, we clear the certain point in the process, which is we know they've moved into the area and have the background checks complete, especially when it's an administrator.

Because usually, sometimes there's a brief window where I can have the old administrator and the new administrator on the systems at the same time to make all the file transfers and everything else.

Or as we've gone through with teachers, just trying to make sure all their classwork goes over.

And you have people who are sitting at home going, "I want to start my new school year.

I want to get ready, upload my files, upload my stuff." And they have to wait until we're spending a day with them, making them drink from a fire hose on our policies and procedures.

So I would love to get to the point where we could do it, there's your digital onboarding week, and then there's your physical onboarding week.

But the contract, it all starts on the same day.

I adjusted this a little bit this year because I come from, they used to one-off kind of pass things onto people whenever they decided to show up.

And then we would have time dedicated with faculty, and half of them had already, with new faculty, and half of them had already been through part of that.

So what I did this year was give the email addresses to supervisors, and they were allowed to pass those on because that should hopefully stop people from sharing all the docs with people's personal emails, which is what was happening instead.

But equipment-wise, I was like, "Let's wait until they are on campus the first day." So once their background checks are done, I was giving them, for our new employees over the summer, giving them their email access so that people could share docs and they could start working.

With the exception of our senior admin, because we've had a lot of transition there, and those people I want as early as possible for that same reason, so that there is some overlap to pass information on, because I did not get that and wish I had that.

It's probably not a bad conversation to have with the director of finance or the HR person about what risk you're putting yourself at to have folks having school-related accounts when they're not technically an employee yet.

So I think different states and different schools may have different thresholds for that, but that's definitely-- It's a tricky one.

Bill, were you going to say something about that? Yeah, I was just curious as to when do people consider new hires actually hired? Because realistically, our contracts run July 1 to June 30th, at least in terms of what you're contracted under, but a lot of times people don't show up until August or what have you.

So, does everyone-- And then we have people that are technically 12-month employees versus those that are only 10-month employees.

But what I'm curious is what people have as the contracted start and end date, regardless of that flex between the two types.

Our teachers start in August on their employment letter, not July.

That's interesting that you have it in July.

So are they technically unemployed from-- When's the last day of that contract? Does that contract that begins August 1, when does that end? July 31st.

All right.

But it takes up the full year, is what I'm getting at.

Yes.

There is a defined start and end date, and there is no gap between the two, correct? Correct.

And then, so do you start assigning accounts, all of those things on the contracted day or the first day that they're in the building? When do those things happen? We prep them.

So we've now gotten the process with our human resources department that when someone clears the-- Someone has their contract signed and their background check clears so that we know that they are technically employable by the school, we create everything on our timeline based on when the projected start date is.

So if we hire a bunch of teachers in June, they will be added to the second their background check clears, they're added to a list that comes to us from HR.

We check that list every week.

We start creating the accounts as we go so that the accounts are sitting there ready to go with a temporary password, but everything is linked together so that our registrar can schedule them into classes.

So all of that stuff is happening in the background with the new people's information because we have it.

If we have an opening, that stays as teacher TBD in the system and the schedule and everything else, and then we go back and link that teacher to the process.

But we start the second they're, I'm going to call it employable by the school because they've cleared our paperwork process, we get notification so we can start our process.

So in a good time, we get it months in advance.

And last minute, we could get it less...

The best one we've had is 6:00 the night before and expected to have the accounts ready at 8:00 a.m.

Yeah.

I know that one.

Yeah.

It is time for us to start wrapping up.

So I just wanted to sort of put out there, especially to maybe the folks who have not weighed in quite as much during our time together, is there anything that you were hoping to get out of this session that you wanted to bring up in our last couple of minutes together? And if not, if everybody could sort of maybe put in the chat maybe a strategy, a boundary, or a process that, based on this conversation today, you might think about bringing back to your school.

But also opening it up to folks who haven't had really as much of a chance to bring up stuff that's on their minds.

Great.

So I see about securely help desk checklists, looking for a listserv.

Atlas does have the ISED listserv.

I have a local one that I'm a big part of here, BASENET.

And if Lizzie or Shana are not on that, I think you're both on that.

Could not live without that.

One new thing per year.

Yes, that one.

Woof.

If only.

All right.

I think I'm going to hand it back over to Kristin, who's going to take us out of here so that we end on time.

Thank you so much, Barbara, and I just thank you guys for the great discussion.

Being new myself to this community, it's really exciting to have this opportunity to hear firsthand from each of you what you're doing at the beginning of the year and as I go through my first year learning how we at Atlas can support you.

I took a lot of notes on resources.

We are looking to update our resource pages and partners to make sure that we are meeting you where you need us to be.

And I did pop in the chat so that you know, I actually was doing it while you were asking, we do have an Atlas community discussion boards, and there are different topics, and groups can create that.

And one of the things we want to do is remind you, continue these discussions all year.

We are here for you all year long.

This is your community, your peer network, and these are the people that have all sat in your chair and all know what you're going through and are ready to help anytime.

So thank you so much, Barbara, and thanks again to METER for sponsoring.

And we will continue to provide these meetups, and if you have any topics and subjects you'd like us to make sure we're bringing up for discussions, please send them to us.

And Dr.

Ashley Cross, my professional development director, will also take content information and things you guys want to hear about.

So we look forward to seeing you on the next one.

And I really do wish you all a wonderful year.

And if there's ever anything you need also, please feel free to reach out to me.

You can find my email on the website or at kristin@theatlas.org.

So wish you all well, and again, thanks so much for your membership and support of Atlas and for participating.

Good luck, everybody.

I'm going to have nightmares about printers now.

Take care, y'all.

Bye-bye.

Thank you all.

Bye..