As I wander the convention hallways here at TCEA and listen to my fellow technology workers I have noticed a disturbing pattern arising. Many school districts and administrators are being seduced into major changes in their technology processes and infrastructure by the phrase "its E-Rate-able" in all of its varieties.

I wish to ask those districts, when E-Rate goes away will you be able to sustain the new processes? Do we believe that it will continue forever, as the TIF grants did? I recall the TIF grants where we all had to prove sustainability and guarantee that the district would maintain the equipment and supporting staff and infrastructure. Now that we are years beyond the last TIF grant I wonder if we have lived up to all of these guarantees?

So what happens, when we eliminate our local web site for a “better” and more “interactive” one that is E-Rate-able? What about the decision to eliminate our local e-mail server for a hosted one? Did we reduce staffing to go along with that?

Now I understand changing from a 1.5mb Internet to a 4.5mb Internet – we can always go back. I also understand the Internal Connections purchases – to a point. Still, if we take the replacement budget for our servers and network equipment away, how will we ever get the money back in our budgets?

Part of this is the old supplement vs supplant argument. And it is a dangerous road. If the State and the school districts figure our new finance system based on the districts receiving all of these funds, will they plan for us to have enough funds in the future? Will they use a 90% district or a 40% district to calculate technology funding? Will we have been seduced into making changes that later will come back to haunt us?

I pose two questions.

1) Beware the E-Rate Seductions- Do we have reason for concern?

2) What would be a sustainable budget amount on a per student basis?

Do all the one-to-one computing initiatives include in their budgets the replacement of those laptops every three years? Four years? Five years? What about all of the money we receive from other departments indirectly? Special Education money purchases software and computers, as does the Curriculum department and the Special Programs group. As their Federal monies dry up, as the State eliminates programs (Remember TIF) and other pressures increase, will this reduction in funds be recovered somewhere?

During this planning time at the Capital we need to collect our thoughts on these issues and address them with each other and our State officials. We have an opportunity to impact these financial decisions. I hope that a year from now when we return to the TCEA convention we can discuss the positive changes in our budgets. However, at the very least we need to be able to say we gave it a good try.

Dirk D Dykstra