Technology Bond Paths and Pitfalls
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, a weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials, and individuals, who are passionate about the future of Michigan education. And now, here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education. This week we are joined in the Foxbright Podcast Studio by Paul Hillman. Paul is a partner and owner in CDH, a nationally recognized and highly specialized technology consulting firm, with a significant experience in helping K-12 schools. The topic of our show today is about getting a technology bond started and managed. Welcome, Paul, it's great to have you on the show.
Paul Hillman: Thanks, Rob. It's really good to be here. Thank you.
Rob Huisingh: Paul, from your experience, what are the kinds of mistakes that IT directors and superintendents make when they are trying to get prepared for a bond?
Paul Hillman: Well, that's a very good question. I have seen the mistakes come in a couple of different ways. One, sometimes they rely a little too much on the architects and the folks that are designing the schools. I have seen some firms who have on-board technical people but they are pretty narrowly focused and don't really understand the application of technology in education so often.
I have also seen them set up a budget based on the square footage of what they are going to build, which is a very curious way of calculating how much money you need for technology, because I have never seen it work in that fashion. So, I have seen that is a problem. Certainly, if they don't have a standing technology committee, that would be a problem because they want to make sure that they are working with their curriculum people to ensure that the application of that technology is actually going to benefit the students, if in fact, that is where they are headed.
Other problems are, frankly, just underestimating what it really costs to implement technology and so, they may get a technology bond passed for two or three million and find out what they really want to accomplish that is going to cost four and now, they are already behind before they even start. So, there is a number of ways that with a little pre-planning they can avoid those simple mistakes and make sure that they are prepared when the technology bond does pass.
Rob Huisingh: Community support is pretty important for one of these issues. How do you prepare your community for passing a technology bond?
Paul Hillman: Yeah, it is incredibly important, in fact. Of course, you are not going to get a bond passed if the community is not behind it and so, what I found in some of the schools districts too and we do help them in some cases. Try to identify those particular real pain-points that they have got in technology. Perhaps, it can't be too complicated; we don't want to make this some kind of whizbang technology that is not going to play with the voters.
Often times, it's something as simple as just making sure that we have got good new desktops for the kids to work on. People tend to understand that the capacity of the servers need to be updated. We are storing more and more files and certainly MP3s and now video editing and such and so they can understand the need for updating infrastructure. But if you are trying to put forth to the voters that every teacher needs a Smart Board before you have got enough PCs, you are probably not going to pass that technology bond.
Rob Huisingh: So assume you've passed the bond, what's next?
Paul Hillman: Well, then work begins, doesn't it? What we have done in a number of cases is we have our highest priority projects that we really want to accomplish. And let's say, for instance, I have just got done with a bond here, they had about $7 million. It sounds like a lot of money, but there is always more projects than there is money. So, what we do is, we really prioritize, okay, in this particular case, this client's, I call it their plumbing if you will, their infrastructure pluming really needed to be updated. It had been seven or eight years since they had done much.
So, we wanted to make sure before we started spending the money their we are going to get the top priority projects out of the way. That means that we are probably going to spend a fair amount of time here because the real cost of these projects don't manifest themselves until they are finally finished and signed off on. So, while they had a wish list of 23 projects and we are going to try to get through as many of those as we can, we only tackled about five or six this for summer. Those that were at highest need, highest priority and that we are re-accessing to make sure that we have got the money we need in order to go forward.
Rob Huisingh: When writing RFPs, what are some of the things you need to think about?
Paul Hillman: Well, I am not a big fan of RFPs, in general, but certainly in the school business they have to be and I will say, they are necessary evil. Get somebody who really understands the RFP process and in CDH's case, we are not the best at that particular element; we have teamed up with some other organizations who do this and the contract administration and the language behind RFP is very, very important. It should heavily favor the school district, they should have a lot of outs embedded in there. They should ensure that warranties and extended warranties are part of that process.
We like to see test plans and sign off by the owner or in this case, the school district, to ensure that that's there. Get as detail as you can about the As-Built Documentation. It is often one of the last things that are out there and the vendors are anxious to get their money and get out and yet, the school district is not quite ready to take over the system yet. So, we embedded training into those RFPs and as a project manager, we ensure that the vendors fulfill their responsibilities before they get all their money.
Rob Huisingh: Should you spend all the money at one time or at different--?
Paul Hillman: No, back to that other point; if we have got all these projects as I say, may be we have got half a million dollars estimated for upgraded server infrastructure and it comes in $600,000. Well, if you are spending all your money simultaneously, you are going to come up on short-end and assistant superintendent of business is going to have a bad time with you. So, really what you should be doing is figure out those projects that needed to be done.
First, getting them through to, say, 70%, 80%, 90% completion when you know pretty much what the dollars are going to finally end up being and then do that. So, on top of which the superintendent is going to like the fact that he is going to be able to get some interest on that money that he has passed. So, it actually is better for all involved; both the students, the teachers and certainly the IT staff to really maybe have a two or three-year plan in which you are going to roll out their technology over that time period as oppose to try and jam it all into one summer.
Rob Huisingh: Probably one of the biggest issue is that you have the money and you have to plan but how do you actually make sure that the technology that you are making that really impacts the classroom?
Paul Hillman: Well, every school district works at it differently. I have seen technology departments actually bifurcate it, if you will, or split between op-tech and instructional tech. The op-tech people are concerned about the enabling, making sure of those desktops and the speed of the network is good and you can store the data but really, it's instructional people who have to get involved and understand that curriculum is going to be delivered and how is it delivered in this particular district and will it project our help. Do they need a Smart Board technology? Do they have a data warehouse or how are they going to do their student's assessments? What are the cliques that they using? Those are the sorts of things that instructional technology people really need to weigh on in.
Now, if you don't have that in your district, then you are going to have to assemble essentially an ad hoc team to talk about how that is. In the smaller districts, there may be a couple of principals and may be a couple of master teachers; larger districts might actually have a standing committee that you can rely on and then work with them.
Rob Huisingh: How important is the technology plan to this whole process?
Paul Hillman: A couple of years ago, the state required everybody to have a technology plan and frankly, it wasn't all that important. They became pretty rote. A lot of people just sort of had one out there and did not really updated. So, you can have a plan and everybody pretty much has to but if you are not following it and you really don't have a road map, then it isn't much to you.
I actually prefer a bit more working copy and this is not really something that is readily published to the community, it should be shared with administration and certainly the IT group should understand what is the two and three and four and five-year window of technology in that particular district. So, this would include a project portfolio, it would show what kind of dependencies, what projects have to occur before the other ones can occur. Those sorts of things. Also, a vision towards the future, I mean are we using collaborative technologies, are we using Web 2.0 technologies, are we working alongside our instructional technology people or those master teachers and seeing how we might do things differently three and four years from now than we are today.
Rob Huisingh: Paul, you a wealth of experience in the technology arena, you are a consultant. Speaking to the audience that we typically talk to as superintendents and secondary school principals, school business officials just as kind of parting comments, what kind of advice do you have for them in this area of technology?
Paul Hillman: What I would say to superintendent to not get snowed by the technospeak that often happens from maybe our own IT department or certainly the vendors that come in and promise the world. These are fairly straightforward matters when we really start thinking about them. Kids have to learn. We need enabling technologies to help with that. Sometimes it's software, sometimes it's document, cameras, or projector systems. Don't get caught up in the whizzbang features of what is happening out there. Do what you know is probably right which is kids are going to need computers, they are going to need access the internet. We need to protect them when they get out to the Internet. We need to make sure that the systems that the school district has is reliable, that the teachers can depend on it and then go down that path. So, I would say, take it easy, go slow at first and obviously, we would like to think, find a technology advisor to help you make sure you are dotting your I's and crossing your T's.
Rob Huisingh: Well, Paul, I want to thank you for taking the time to be on our show. You're a wealth of knowledge is and it has been a pleasure to have you here and I hope you will join us again.
Paul Hillman: Thank you, I would love to do so.
Rob Huisingh: If you would like to learn more about CDH or contact Paul, you can find his contact information on their website, Their URL is www.cdh.com. Again, that URL is www.cdh.com. Do you have a story or something of interest that concerns Michigan education? Well, if you do, I invite you to send us your thoughts. You can find us online at www.insidemieducation.com. Again, that's www.insidemieducation.com.
Until next week, this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
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