With the caveat that there are no easy answers, an expert panel at the California IT in Education conference last month nonetheless offered some suggestions: share services to split costs where feasible, hire consultants to help make use of available funds, ensure IT has representation on Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) committees, and partner with mobile carriers for take-home Internet connectivity.
Michael Fine, chief executive officer of California’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, said the state is in a difficult spot, made more difficult by various policy changes and uncertainties. He pointed out that since 2008, school leaders have had a playbook for what to do during economic downturns, but growing dependence upon costly technology forces some of them into difficult decisions.
“We have enough resources to do what we need to do, but not enough to do what we want to do, and that forces us into a daily conversation about priorities. It forces our superintendent to lead their governing board through that issue constantly,” he said. “What’s different today than ever before, in the technology world, from my perspective, is that technology is looked to for continuity of instruction, more so than it’s ever been. And when we’re talking about continuity of instruction, we’re also talking about revenue to the district, because we’re talking about continuity of ADA [average daily attendance] to the district, right? You’ve never been in that revenue-generating role before, in the technology world, and yet we are now.”
Fine added that dysfunction in the federal government, where some decisions are made at midnight and expected to be implemented the next day, is having serious impacts on the ability of local school districts to plan.
“Today we get ‘dear colleague’ letters. … One ‘dear colleague’ letter at 8 in the morning says we’re sweeping all these funds and we’re taking it all away from you. By 8:30 they may send another letter that corrects the first letter. By 3 in the afternoon, we’ve got a lawsuit and everything’s off the table, and by 9 o’clock the next morning, we have a new ‘dear colleague’ letter that says something different,” he said. “We’re not used to that.”
Fine said regardless of whether a change on its face is good or bad, the abruptness is a big part of federal influence. For California specifically, he said funding cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and changing eligibility rules for Medicaid (or Medi-Cal in California) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits could mean that fewer students qualify. If and when that happens, school districts with a high proportion of low-income students will get substantially less money from E-rate and the local control funding formula (LCFF). This doubly concerns IT, he said, because IT must manage student information, and many kids who are eligible for free or reduced-cost meals get their eligibility through direct database-to-database certification.
“LCFF is the only thing you can count on, and I’ll tell you, it’s being threatened right now, simply until we know how the state is going to react to the federal Medicaid and staff cuts,” Fine said. “The difference between being at 54.6 percent [students on free or reduced lunch] and at 55.1 percent, that’s tens of millions of dollars to a local district, depending on the size of the district. So, understand that, and understand your role in that. That’s why that data is so critical. If you haven’t already automated the free and reduced form, you want to get it filled out by the families, because the direct certification data is going to go down. Once they implement those eligibility changes — and it’ll be over the next couple years, it won’t all show up immediately — there will be an impact.”
Fine and Erick Steelman, chief technology and innovation officer at El Monte Union High School District, both emphasized the importance of IT leadership having representation on LCAP committees. Steelman said IT having a voice on those committees makes a big difference when technology goals and actions are being defined, and Fine said it’s an opportunity for IT leaders to help their districts innovate.
“You can’t have a viable LCAP if it’s developed in silos … with no conversation with the business office, with HR, with special ed, with technology, with maintenance and operations,” he said. “For those of us that sample LCAPs and look at them, look at budgets and so on, you can tell immediately the LCAPs that were developed in silos with one or two people. You need to be at the table. You need to have ideas. You are, in most cases, some of the most innovative thinkers in your district, so that needs to show in the LCAP.”
On the question of what current or anticipated policy debates IT leaders should be paying close attention to, the Imperial County Office of Education’s CEO Luis Wong drew attention to the fact that E-rate funds, which come from telecommunication fees, are dwindling as landlines become a thing of the past.
“The reality is, the contribution factor, the money that goes into the E-rate program, is drying up. It gets assessed based on phone lines, and everybody’s cutting the cord, so there’s less money coming in, and we’re having a hard time trying to figure out how to get that contribution factor fixed,” he said. “In the meantime, the new Category 2 funding cycle just started, so this is an opportunity to look at your infrastructure, plan out your next five years, refresh and maximize your resources.”
Given the Federal Communications Commission’s reversal on E-rate funding for Wi-Fi hot spots and school bus connectivity, panelists recommended that school districts invest in a good consultant to make sure they're complying but also maximizing every penny available to them. They also suggested looking at partnerships and programs offered by service providers like T-Mobile and Verizon to help fill the “homework gap” for students who need assistance with at-home Internet access.
On the subject of shared services, Wong highlighted the advantages of economies of scale, moving services (but not servers) to the cloud and contracting for virtual firewall services.
Fine said there are many potential efficiencies to be found in regional shared services.
“If you are a district with very large restricted programs of some kind, who are taking care of their actual devices but not contributing to the backbone, and to the support services, to me there’s absolutely an opportunity there,” he said.
