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Show Me the Savings: A Request for the Sarasota
School Board
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Dear Dr. Kleinlein and members of the Sarasota school board,
Don't you and the rest of the board wish this whole Mac vs. PC
thing would just go away so you could get on with the real
business of the school board? What a waste of time!
I have only one simple, nonpartisan question you can ask to settle
this thing once and for all. Please direct your IT staff to prepare a
specific report predicting how much money will be saved and how
many positions will be eliminated by switching to a single
platform. A simple question; it is the entire basis for this
silly argument which causes you to find your district featured in the
newspapers and on dozens (yes dozens) of web sites discussing the
issue.
Make sure you have some folks, like Doug
Gilliliand, look over this report to make sure its
assumptions are reasonable. Perhaps Mr.
Brooks at the local paper could take a look as well. As a
reporter I am sure he would be interested in any public documents you
have regarding this matter. I would like to have a copy myself, as
far as that goes, because in all of my research on matters like these
I have yet to see a copy of any firm prediction from anyone,
anywhere, that actually details the savings such a single platform
switch actually engenders.
I have students working on many exciting science projects, such as
using giant telescopes in Arizona, taking pictures with a space
telescope, and doing original research on pictures taken of Mars by
space probes. I use Macs in my classroom, and, like your district,
our district has decided to stop purchasing Macs in order to make IT
costs go down and make it easier to manage the district's computers.
Currently our entire IT staff is working to reformat every PC on
campus due to a worm introduced to the network by a student. This
work will take several months. It will likely require overtime and
possibly additional staffing or work orders will begin to pile up and
not be fulfilled.
If your district is like mine, you will be surprised to find that
no such estimate actually exists prior to your asking for it; it will
be forthcoming when you ask (if you're lucky), but it will not
include staff reductions in the immediate future, which of course is
the only way to bring real savings to the district. You know and I
know that 90% of any district's budget is personnel. This isn't about
market share, as Mr. Brooks thinks; it's about money, isn't it?
What's the bottom line here?
A lack of any such report containing documented savings can only
lead you to the inevitable conclusion that it is somehow the
superintendent who is having an unreasonable preference for a
platform, whereas Mr. Gilliliand publicly supports having a
multiplatform environment and has nothing against Windows machines
per se. It's possible I'm wrong about this, but I don't think it is
likely.
Until you have this information, you cannot reasonably be expected
to balance the cost savings vs. the educational price you will pay by
alienating and demoralizing your most expert teachers.
Isn't it the function of school leadership to enable teachers and
students to achieve greatness and then remove obstacles to this
success? Forcing your expert teachers to waste time on this issue
takes away from your students. Help them by resolving this once and
for all.
I am not writing at the request of Mr. Gilliliand; I've yet to
correspond with him directly. I'm simply trying to help you make this
all go away. It will, I think, if you follow my advice. Think of the
positive press you will gain by making your solution a model for
other districts around the country to follow. You're not the only
district to face this annoying problem. Believe me, I know.
Sincerely, Jeff Adkins Antioch Unified School District Teacher of the Year Antioch, California http://www.lowendmac.com/lab/
Jeff Adkins is a science teacher who isn't afraid to state his preferences in computing platforms. In his classroom he has everything from a beige All-in-One to a a G4 XServe, and they all work together nicely. He calls himself the "poster child for technology integration" in the classroom. He was the 2006 Outstanding Educator of the Year for the California Computer Using Educators (CUE) organization. He also maintains a site for astronomy teachers at www.AstronomyTeacher.com.
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