Three district-level technology leaders shared their recent experiences and successes.
Chris Saxon, director of technology field services at Georgia's Cherokee County School District, saw 3,893 tickets come across his desk in a six-day period. There was the usual password reset requests, but this year’s spike was attributed to work orders for setting up and deploying new devices, disconnecting old technologies and onboarding new or relocated staff.
Saxon applied the following best practices outline to face the problem at hand: prepare and prevent; tackle the biggest issues first (like network outages); prioritize the tickets; and opt for a unified system, he wrote in a Sept. 25 email.
“The best way to manage the inevitable spike of help requests is to prevent as many requests as possible before they arise by giving staff and students the training they need,” Saxon wrote. “This can be done by implementing a school startup checklist, basing the timelines on the start date of various roles or locations.”
The unified system was also a difference maker, Saxon wrote, noting that his district uses Incident IQ’s unified workflow management platform, to streamline ticket requests.
Katie Harmon, educational technology director of the Westhill district in Syracuse, N.Y., said this year she welcomed aboard an IT help desk coordinator to help with the massive influx of tickets that included 100-plus daily work orders. In the past, Harmon’s staff of four technicians was always overwhelmed at the start of the school year, often forcing her to temporarily set aside certain responsibilities to help manage the nonstop calls for tech support.
“Before the help desk, I closed more tickets than any of my technicians,” Harmon said during an Oct. 10 interview, noting that with this new system in place there are days when her department sees fewer than 40 tickets. “This helped us to prioritize, establish and order, and take the little stuff off my plate. I think it makes us a lot more efficient. It’s been awesome.”
John Armstrong, chief officer for technology and innovation in Illinois’ Joilet Public Schools District 86, said when he began working there in 1994, there were only four computers across all schools in the district. Nearly 30 years later, his toughest days on the job came after the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the school began providing devices to the district's 10,000 students.
Federal relief money allowed Armstrong to rebuild his tech support platform, and prior to the start of this academic year, the district doubled the size of its support staff, from four to eight. Additionally, two technicians were promoted to manager-level positions, allowing him to catch up on responsibilities unrelated to tech support.
